Author Description

Before her expatriation in the United States after the events on Tiananmen Square in June 1989, Ai Bei was recognized in her homeland as one of the outstanding talents of a new generation of young Chinese writers. Red Ivy, Green Earth Mother contains three of her best short stories and a novella and represents the first of her work to be translated into English. Provocative, shocking, and always interesting, her work strikes a universal chord while illuminating a culture and society that for many people seems clouded in mystery and stereotypes. Readers will be surprised and intrigued by the revelatory power and sensual quality of Ai Bei’s writing and its insights into women’s roles in contemporary China. “With these hauntingly dark but beautifully written and translated stories of the defoliation of beauty and sensuality, Chinese fiction takes a great leap forward onto the stage of contemporary world fiction. Through Ai Bei’s searing, honest narrative of a woman’s interior battle to remain human, we become privy to a whole new dimension of China’s heroic efforts to once again ‘liberate’ itself.” —Orville H. Schell