Maos Last Dancer

The 2003 autobiography "Mao 's Last Dancer", by Li Cunxin, is a book that is open to interpretation. Overall, it is an interesting book that presents many different ideas and themes, including traditional Chinese culture and the comparison between East and West ideology. "Mao 's Last Dancer" tells the tale of Li Cunxin, a Chinese dancer in the Houston Ballet, and his adventures. The book also includes various members of Li 's family, his dance teachers at his ballet academy and the friends he makes as he travels to the U.S.A. At the age of 11, Li was taken from a poor Chinese village by Madame Mao 's cultural delegates and taken to Beijing to study ballet. In 1979, during a cultural exchange trip to Texas, he fell in love with an American woman. Two years later, he managed to defect to the United States, getting married to do so, and went on to perform as a principal dancer for the Houston Ballet and as a principal artist with the Australian Ballet. "Mao 's Last Dancer" is an autobiography in nature, and this means that anyone who can read will enjoy this tale of determination and perseverance. It is written is such a way that younger readers can enjoy a great tale of a dancer growing up from the forgotten regions of poverty stricken China, and younger readers will particularly enjoy the various fables scattered thorough the story. One of these fables is especially relative to the main story, and this specific one tells the story of a frog at the bottom of a well who hears about a wider, more colourful world outside of the stone walls trapping him in the darkness. The frog dreams of seeing this better world, and he tries and tries to climb up the slippery walls of the wells. For the more mature readers, "Mao 's Last Dancer" presents many deeper themes, like Communism and poverty, and also presents many comparisons between certain aspects of life, like the differences in culture between the East and West. All in all, this book provides a window of