Kang Zhengguo is the author of the acclaimed memoir Confessions: An Innocent Life in Communist China (2007), which offers a unique perspective on life during the Cultural Revolution. Describing himself as a misfit and contrarian, Kang’s rebellious actions led to his expulsion from university, forced labor, a three-year prison sentence, and a failed career in a peasant commune. A poet and scholar of classical Chinese literature, he has been a Senior Lecturer in Chinese at Yale University since 1994.

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Confessions: An Innocent Life in Communist China by Kang Zhengguo

Confessions | An Innocent Life in Communist China by Kang Zhengguo tells the author’s story during a difficult part of China’s history. With clear vision this intimate memoir draws us into the intersections of everyday life and Communist power from the first days of “Liberation” in 1949 through the Tiananmen Square protests and after.