62 pages • 2 hours read
Ji-li JiangRed Scarf Girl
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1997A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapter 16-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary: The Incriminating Letter
The night Ji-li gets home from the country, her mother and Uncle Tian have a secret meeting. Afterwards, her mother puts some pieces of paper down and goes into the bathroom to wash up for bed. Ji-li reads the papers, which are a draft of an anonymous letter to the Municipal Party Committee criticizing the Rebels, who are the group in power at Ji-li’s father’s workplace. While the letter makes some very good points, it is a very dangerous thing to have in the apartment.
A day later, Ji-li is preparing dinner when her mother bursts in to tell them to hide the letter because the people from Ji-li’s father’s workplace are coming to search their home. Ji-li hides the letter in the cat’s litter box. The search party comes in and ransacks the apartment. Ji-yong tries to stop them from taking a book that he has borrowed and must return. Instead, they tear off the cover. Ji-yong rushes at the man who ruined the book, but he pushes him away, and Ji-li and her sister hold Ji-yong back so that he doesn’t get hurt or into trouble.
Six-Fingers tells Thin-Face that a letter has been hidden and he demands that Ji-li tell him where it is. When she refuses, he hits her grandmother across the face and makes her kneel facing the wall, promising that she will have to stay that way until someone tells him where the letter is. The search party finds the letter in the litter box soon after.
After the search party leaves, taking everything with them but a pile of clothes and a turned-over desk, Ji-li’s mother sends Ji-yong to warn Uncle Tian that the letter has been found, since he is the only one who can get out of the building without being seen. He returns to say that no one answered at Tian’s, even though it is the middle of the night, and they conclude that Tian has already been taken in. The next morning, Ji-li’s mother must go to work and register as a “landlord’s wife,” and her grandmother must register as a street sweeper as punishment for hiding the letter. The chapter ends with Ji-li wondering whether she should continue to live.
Chapter 17 Summary: Sweeping
The chapter opens with Ji-li watching her grandmother slowly and carefully sweep the street. Ji-li’s mother is still ill, and their home is unrecognizable, with straw mats for beds and the lid of a crate for a table. Ji-li considers running away and feels like she does not want to live, but her mother has asked her to take care of her brother and sister if anything happens to her and Grandma. Ji-li promises her mother that she will and also makes a promise to herself to care for her mother and grandmother as well.
Epilogue Summary
The Epilogue opens with the question of why Ji-li never hated Mao. The answer, she tells us, is brainwashing; Mao “controlled everything we read, everything we heard, and everything we learned in school” (265). She then explains that it was only after Mao died that everyone found out that the Cultural Revolution was a “part of a [political] power struggle” (266)—adding insult to injury. The Epilogue also tells what happened to many of the people introduced in the book, including Ji-li’s family members, An Yi, Lin-lin, Chang Hong, and Bai Shan, and even Du Hai.
Jiang also mentions her move to the United States, and how she was able to move her family with her, with the exception of Grandma and Song Po-po, who died in China. And she explains why she wrote her memoir—as a way of helping people to better understand one another.
Chapter 16-Epilogue Analysis
Chapters 16 and 17 are the climax and denouement of this narrative. The search of the Jiang home and seizure of nearly everything they own, along with the brutal treatment of Grandma and Ji-yong in particular, illustrate how even the mildest forms of protest, such as anonymous letters, elicit an excessive and violent response from those in power. It’s not surprising, then, that Ji-li wonders whether life is worth living: The family is about as hopeless as it can be.
In terms of plot, nothing is resolved by Chapter 17’s denouement. If this were a novel, something would need to happen—the father would come home, for example, or something worse and more final would occur: someone would die. This is not a novel, however, so the resolution is of a different kind—one more closely connected to Ji-li’s newfound resolve to take care of her family, and to keep going, day after day, no matter how difficult things become. In other words, there is no “happily ever after,” or even a tragic finality at the end of this narrative—just a reminder that life goes on—some good and some bad things happen—and the only option, really, is to keep going with what one has.
The Epilogue reinforces this “life goes on” sentiment by revealing how things turn out for Ji-li and her family and friends. It also addresses Jiang’s feelings toward China and Chairman Mao, which is something most readers are curious about after reading her memoir. Here is where Jiang offers a little more in the way of resolution: Yes, there was much suffering, but no, Jiang does not hate China or Chairman Mao. Feelings are always more complex than that, and in the end, the Cultural Revolution did not prevent Ji-li from achieving success.
