The Palest Ink (Audible Audio Edition) Kay Bratt Will Damron Brilliance Audio Books
Download As PDF : The Palest Ink (Audible Audio Edition) Kay Bratt Will Damron Brilliance Audio Books
A sheltered son from an intellectual family in Shanghai, Benfu spends 1966 anticipating a promising violinist career and an arranged marriage. On the other side of town lives Pony Boy, a member of a lower-class family - but Benfu's best friend all the same. Their futures look different but guaranteed...until they're faced with a perilous opportunity to leave a mark on history.
At the announcement of China's Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao's Red Guard members begin their assault, leaving innocent victims in their wake as they surge across the country. With political turmoil at their door, both Benfu and Pony Boy must face heart-wrenching decisions regarding family, friendship, courage, and loyalty to their country during one of the most chaotic periods in history.
The prequel to the beloved Tales of the Scavenger's Daughters series, The Palest Ink depicts Benfu's coming-of-age during the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution.
The Palest Ink (Audible Audio Edition) Kay Bratt Will Damron Brilliance Audio Books
This is a novel in the 'Scavenger's Daughters' series of books and tells of the early childhood and youth of Benfu as he grows up in a scholarly and wealthy family. It tells of a relationship with a boy of lower caste and of the growing Red Army influence that was to affect the people of China in various degrees of severity. For me it was enlightening, not always in a good way, I knew of the influence of Chairman Mao as I grew up in the late 60's but had little understanding how devastating it was for the Chinese people. I thought it tied the story well with the other books in the series, it told of the 'group think' of a nation fearing for their lives on an individual basis, similar I guess to Nazi Germany, Kay Bratt tells a colourful and interesting story, without too much graphic violence, and with a heart warming feel for those brave enough to make a stand and say 'this is wrong'.Product details
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The Palest Ink (Audible Audio Edition) Kay Bratt Will Damron Brilliance Audio Books Reviews
Mao Tse-Tung is at a crossroads in China in the year 1966. His original plan to increase agricultural output has been a disaster and stories about brutality, starvation and disease travel like lightning despite efforts to curtail dissension and negativity. Three young Chinese students, Benfu, Pony Boy and Wen, are divided in their loyalty to Mao. However, little by little, a transformation occurs in their devotion, an evolution in which they believe they must publish the abuses and brutalities being committed by Mao’s notorious Red Guard, a group of supporters who become Mao’s arm of accusation and compliance. The latter discover they have power and they carry out that formidable opportunity with terror and death. Benfu, Pony Bok and Wen carry out a plan to reveal this travesty of progress but the consequences will be phenomenal and costly.
Benfu is a talented violin player who comes from a distinguished family. His mother is constantly monitoring his every move and her demands are almost paranoid in her efforts to preserve and guard the “family honor” and social status they have worked so hard to possess. Benfu is becoming a man and so finds his mother’s efforts to control him unbearable. His only consolation is the time he spends with his best friend, Pony Boy.
Tragedy worsens Pony Boy’s status as a poor young man. When his father becomes ill, Pony Boy must work long, long hours just to allow his family to retain their home and have meager meals to survive. Pony Boy after turning from an ardent Communist realizes Mao is repressing and brutalizing his people during the period when all high status Chinese people are being purged and reeducated. Pony Boy and Benfu plan a publication that will expose all that is wrong with Mao’s plans and actual realities.
Benfu and Pony Boy will fall in love with women they respect, independent, strong-minded women who are willing to testify to the travesties of justice now rampant throughout China. Benfu is sent to escape to the country to escape the Red Guard’s investigations into wealthy families but that country journey is one of working on a collective farm in which self-criticism and judgment by others is a constant threat to life and limb. Pony Boy continues their efforts while Benfu works and suffers. Eventually their reunion will spark a final challenge that is breathtaking in its fierce challenge and involve some other very special characters.
The Palest Ink is a potent, beautiful story about resistance and loyalty to friend, family and foe the reader will find hard to forget. Its insistence that the written word surpasses all memories proves significantly true about this particular, significant historical period. The mission of serving as a witness to history is valuable beyond words and so succeeds beyond expectations. Very nicely crafted, Kay Bratt!
Three teenagers caught up in the chaos of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution five decades ago try to call attention to the gross excesses of the Red Guards, civilian zealots in league with Chinese Communist officials, dedicated to overturning China's cultural and political traditions. Their attempts at underground journalism put them and their families at great risk and eventually exact a terrible toll, leading us to descriptions of the pitiful conditions of those sent from the cities to the farms to try to "learn from the peasants" as forced laborers and those sent to horrific prisons for speaking up, even tentatively, against the oppression by these political fanatics.
Although set in the mid-1960s, the novel should sound a warning to all of us about the danger of political movements that leave no room for alternative views and traditional values. "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely" (Lord Acton). Like Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984, it shows how totalitarian power can break the bonds of love and honor, even as Bratt's work celebrates the heroism of those who resisted, often in vain. Yes, revolutions need to "break some eggs to make an omelet" sadly, those "eggs" are people.
Kay Bratt knows China, and the Chinese, and I loved this as much as I did her earlier CHASING CHINA, a moving novel about the plight of Chinese orphans and the efforts of a Chinese-American girl to get to the truth of her being separated from her birth parents and sent as an adoptee to America.
This prequel will impel me to read more in Bratt's "scavenger's daughter" series. Kudos to her.
I have read and enjoyed other Kay Bratt books and have always had an interest in the Cultural Revolution so of course wasn’t going to miss this one about two young friends and the message they had for China through their underground newspaper. Although I loved the title and it’s meaning, I wasn’t drawn into the characters from the beginning; other book club commitments kept me from returning to this novel. While I am usually compelled by similar stories, I found this one very drawn out and I stopped reading about half way through. I also had a hard time understanding why she called one character Pony Boy and I was thinking about the various similarities to the young narrator from The Outsiders. I recently picked up the novel where I left off (nearly a year later) and found myself more attached and interested in the outcome so completed Benfu and Pony Boy’s heart wrenching stories in a few weeks. Why Mao is still so revered is something I will never understand. Lisa See’s “Dreams of Joy” was unforgettable and tore me up. I am looking forward to the rest of the series by Kay Bratt and to seeing how the future works out for some of these characters. I hope those books are more memorable than The Palest Ink.
This is a novel in the 'Scavenger's Daughters' series of books and tells of the early childhood and youth of Benfu as he grows up in a scholarly and wealthy family. It tells of a relationship with a boy of lower caste and of the growing Red Army influence that was to affect the people of China in various degrees of severity. For me it was enlightening, not always in a good way, I knew of the influence of Chairman Mao as I grew up in the late 60's but had little understanding how devastating it was for the Chinese people. I thought it tied the story well with the other books in the series, it told of the 'group think' of a nation fearing for their lives on an individual basis, similar I guess to Nazi Germany, Kay Bratt tells a colourful and interesting story, without too much graphic violence, and with a heart warming feel for those brave enough to make a stand and say 'this is wrong'.
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