Introduction Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution is a memoir written by Yuan Gao. This memoir captures events which surrounded the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in China. This revolution has been a subject of many scholarly works especially in the political field. In this memoir, Gao presents the reality of life during this period. This article will discuss this memoir with a special inclination to the activities of the Red Guards. Born Red Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution is a voluminous text authored by Yuan Gao based on experiences he went through during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution era in China. In over 300 pages, the author recounts the way of life during one of the most tumultuous times in the history of China. With the fine details included in the memoir, it helps a reader to walk through the Chinese revolutionary era and witness the havoc that the revolution triggered by Mao Zedong had on the Chinese people. After reading through the memoir, William described it as “a voice that speaks to us of the human anguish of inhuman events” (Gao ix). William further argued that the author is better placed to write an account of the revolution since he, the author, was a Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution. The author’s accounts are compelling and comparing them with what is known and written in political studies texts, the memoir is worth reading. The Cultural Revolution The early years of the 1960s are seen as the years that necessitated the emergence of the Cultural Revolution (SPICE 1). The economy was terrible and the society was going through a hard time. Gao notes concerning the clothes they wore “we were in rags, and even our patches were patched” (9). Food, an essential commodity, was costly. People resorted to sell what they had and used the cash they obtained to buy food, and as a result everything except food was affordable: “the cost of just about anything that was not edible went down” (Gao 10). It is also worth noting that the Great Leap Attempt which Mao Zedong had initiated had failed (Freedman 1). The Rear Lake which Gao talks about is an indication of this failure (Gao 14). It seems that Mao Zedong was contemplating on what to do with this disaster that China was deep into. He was particularly irritated by the fact that peasants, who formed the larger percentage of the population, were not being considered and were sidelined by the urban class population. He set to introduce a participatory society by opposing bourgeois ideologies. The idea to oppose bourgeois ideologies was quickly absorbed by people as Gao illustrates all over the memoir: “her mother is under attack for teaching bourgeois music” (p. 79); “…proletarian factions could unite with one another, but not with bourgeois factions” (p. 335). In some cases, the situation was worse and people became afraid to express themselves openly because what one could say one day could somehow be connected with bourgeois ideologies the following day. Avoiding public expression became the best way of evading being connected with bourgeois ideologies. Interpretation of what could be referred to as bourgeois was sometimes overstretched: Gao notes that even responding to some natural