About Anchee Min

Anchee Min was born in Shanghai in 1957. At seventeen she was sent to a labor collective, where a talent scout for Madame Mao's Shanghai Film Studio recruited her to work as a movie actress. She moved to the United States in 1984. Her first memoir, Red Azalea, was an international bestseller, published in twenty countries. She has since published six novels, including Pearl of China and the forthcoming memoir The Cooked Seed (Bloomsbury, May 7 2013).

When Min was 17, she was sent to a collective farm[3] near the East China Sea, where she endured horrific conditions and worked 18-hour days. Eventually, she suffered a spinal cord injury. She began an affair with the commander at her camp, a woman named Yin, although she attributes the affair largely to loneliness.

At the collective farm, Min was discovered by a team of talent scouts from the Shanghai Film Studio and was selected to become an actress for her ideal "proletarian good looks." She eventually won the lead role in a propaganda film inspired by Madame Mao. However, the film was never completed. After Mao Zedong's death and the subsequent downfall of Jiang Qing,[4] Min was ostracized and treated badly. She was depressed and considered suicide.[4] With the assistance of her friend, actress Joan Chen, and the sponsorship of her aunt living in Singapore, Min obtained a passport and applied to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.[4] She then emigrated to the United States. As she was initially entering the country, she was nearly deported when it was discovered that, contrary to what she had put on her visa application, she did not speak English. However, she was able to convince the immigration officer to allow her to enter into the country.

After moving to the US, Min worked five jobs at the same time[2][6] and learned English by watching Sesame Street.

Min's first husband was a Chinese artist named Qigu Jiang. They had a daughter, Lauryann, who attended Stanford University. According to Min herself, she "lured [Qigu] into marriage, making herself pregnant by him although she knew he did not want a child" and subsequently their marriage fell apart.

In 1999, Min married teacher and writer Lloyd Lofthouse. She filed for divorce in 2014, and it was finalized in 2015.

Min graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Fine Arts