Anchee Min was born in Shanghai in 1957. Like her character Wild Ginger, she ardently followed the tenets of Maoism to save her spirit and joined the Red Guards to avoid being attacked. At seventeen she was sent to a labor collective, where after a number of years a talent scout for Madame Mao's Shanghai Film Studio recruited her to work as a propaganda movie actress. She came to the United States in 1984. Min's critically acclaimed novel Becoming Madame Mao was a national bestseller. Her 1994 memoir, Red Azalea, was named a New York Times Notable Book and was an international bestseller.