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Fictionalized poems that embody the reality of life in twentieth-century China through the voice of Jiang Qing, the wife of Mao Zedong.

From the Diary of Madame Mao is a poetry collection of fictionalized diary entries in the voice of Jiang Qing, wife of Mao Zedong and a vilified leader of the “Gang of Four," a Maoist political faction which wielded unchecked and violent suppression of dissent during China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76). The haunting voice in this collection recounts the events of twentieth-century China through the imagined inner thoughts of Jiang, a liberated woman in a male-dominated society who struggled to fend for herself but then, upon gaining totalitarian power, became “mentally ill.” Maria Teresa Ogliastri—who has lived under authoritarian regimes in Venezuela for more than two decades— “opts for compassion” in her portrayal of this infamous public figure, conveying the full complexity of human emotion and experience in her singular lyric voice.