The 10-year-long Cultural Revolution is history now. However, its specter is still haunting us today. What is taking place in the US and the free world is alarmingly similar to the beginning of it. Reviewing what the Cultural Revolution led to perhaps can help prevent us from the headlong descent along the same disastrous path to losing our voices, our rights, and even our lives.

The memoir, "Dragon Elegy", is about how a family, people around them and the author survived during the Cultural Revolution. Mao's perpetual hunt for class enemies led to three deaths in the author's family and the rape and denunciation of the author, a teenager then. However, they persevered and survived. It is a story that tens of millions of others have been through and a story of human spirit triumphing over evil. It is also a story of a young woman's struggle in the face of adversities and her persistent attempts to fulfill her potential. The reader will experience the vast extent of Communist class oppression and catch the very essence of a Communist regime. It is presented with Mao's revolution in the background and the author's personal and her family's ordeals as the focal point. It is not just a story that took place in Maoist China, but a story of universal human struggle.