From the Diary of Madame Mao

Fictionalized poems that embody the reality of life in twentieth-century China through the voice of Jiang Qing, the wife of Mao Zedong.

From the Diary of Madame Mao is a poetry collection of fictionalized diary entries in the voice of Jiang Qing, wife of Mao Zedong and a vilified leader of the "Gang of Four," a Maoist political faction which wielded unchecked and violent suppression of dissent during China's Cultural Revolution (1966-76). The haunting voice in this collection recounts the events of twentieth-century China through the imagined inner thoughts of Jiang, a liberated woman in a male-dominated society who struggled to fend for herself but then, upon gaining totalitarian power, became "mentally ill." Maria Teresa Ogliastri--who has lived under authoritarian regimes in Venezuela for more than two decades-- "opts for compassion" in her portrayal of this infamous public figure, conveying the full complexity of human emotion and experience in her singular lyric voice.