The White-Haired Girl

Sun was born in Beijing in 1964 to doting intellectual parents. Because they worked six days a week at the Ministry of Culture, she was sent at age two to a live-in kindergarten, where she learned to worship Chairman Mao and desire nothing more than to be ""his best kid."" When her mother was sent to a distant agricultural labor unit, she went along to live at a nearby school, from which she could visit her mother occasionally; her father, a filmmaker, was left behind. In time, she was sent back to Beijing to be cared for by a nanny and be near her father. But he had taken a mistress and did not appear for a long time. On her mother's return, his infidelity nearly destroyed the family, though eventually her parents reconciled. Through their wrenching love story, her own accepting childhood and her teenage infatuation with a poet, Sun details the madness of personal life under Mao; the growing disaffection, subsequently, under Deng; and the rush of people, including herself, to emigrate to the once-hated capitalist U.S. Although the writing here does not compare with the poetic beauty of Anchee Min's Red Azalea, Sun has written an authentic document of growing up in Maoist culture. Author tour. (Mar.)