Bitter Winds: A Memoir Of My Years In China's Gulag

Bitter Winds: A Memoir Of My Years In China's Gulag, by Harry Wu and Carolyn Wakeman

Harry was an outstanding student and athlete at Beijing's Geology Insitute in 1960 was labeled a counterrevolutionary rightist, which meant being an outcast permanently. In April he was denounced and expelled, and sentenced to reeducation through labor. Until 1979 he lived and worked in prison labor camps. He learned survival skills from other prisoners, peasants and minor criminals, and to be concerned only for himself. He was beaten, tortured, and, during the great famine when many other prisoners died, he nearly starved to death. At that point, he suddenly realized "Human life has no value here... It has no more importance than a cigarette ash flicked in the wind. But if a person's life has no value, then the society that shapes that life has no value either. If the people mean no more than dust, then the society is worthless and does not deserve to continue." A gripping story that is hard to stop reading.
-Nancy