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The first newspaper that Castro ordered shut out in 1959 was Zig-Zag, Cuba’s Mad Magazine. He next banned Cuba’s most beloved comedian, Leopoldo Fernandez because while performing on a stage with a large portrait of Fidel Castro, he had quibbled pointing to Castro’s picture: “And that one there, we have to hang him very high.”
In the next 48 years, there would be no more jokes told in public in Cuba. But the Cuban people did not lose their sense of humor, now steeped in pathos, but took it underground. Twenty years ago, a man living in Cuba began to compile these jokes about the Revolution and managed to smuggle his collection out of the country.
Laughter can be a cry of despair as much as tears can be an expression of joy. There are essentially two ways to deal with the predations and privations of tyrannical rule – to surrender to its authority and become its slave or accomplice; or to fight it with the only weapons at your disposal – contempt and ridicule sublimated into humor.
Manuel Tellechea, NJ

This digital document is an article from Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica, published by Thomson Gale on July 1, 2005. The length of the article is 6258 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Deconstructing totalitarism: fragmenting the whole in narratives.(LITERATURA)
Author: Hilda Gairaud Ruiz
Publication: Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 31 Issue: 2 Page: 9(13)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

'Flying High Out of a Tibetan Valley' is Liming Jing's autobiography about her struggle to discover her independence and to fulfill her dreams in the hostile and unforgiving regime of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward (1958-1960) and Cultural Revolution(1966-1976). Liming Jing grew up in an isolated Tibetan town in Sichuan Province during the hunger and madness of Mao's Great Leap Forward and his Cultural Revolution. At the age of 12, Liming Jing witnessed a 'struggle meeting' in which her parents were falsely and vindictively denounced as enemies of the state and repeatedly ostracized and beaten in a Maoist indoctrinated frenzy. Soon both her parents were jailed and she lived alone. She was prevented from doing what she liked best - playing Ping-Pong and performing in a dance group. In high school and in the countryside as an Educated Youth, Liming Jing was chastised and ostracized for her ambition to become a translator and to fly high out of a Tibetan valley as a world citizen.

This was only the beginning of Liming Jing's odyssey. Her level of exasperation accelerated as she was stymied at every subsequent personal milestone: education, relationships, travel, and professional. Her hopes unwittingly built with the encouraging words by manipulators only to be dashed upon the rocks of guilt by family history. What must she do to attain her dreams? Would China allow her the dignity and honor to blossom as an individual or must she acquiesce to its spiritless political orthodoxy?

The book is, nevertheless, profoundly optimistic. Like her father, Liming never loses her love of her homeland, even when they are victims of its most malignant twentieth century cruelties (Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward and his Cultural Revolution). Liming's story personifies the adage: "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Triumphantly, Liming Jing has battled political and social adversity.