Unit 3: Mao's Last Dancer (Li Cunxin)

In 1961, just three years after Mao's disastrous Great Leap Forward, Li Cunxin was born, the sixth son in a family of Chinese peasants who eked out a meager existence on a rural commune. During his childhood he endured unimaginable poverty and hardships and witnessed the shooting of 15 "counter-revolutionaries" by Mao's Red Guards. When chosen to audition for Madame Mao's Beijing Ballet Academy at age 11, ballet became his chance for a good job and enough food for life. Many years of training, two U.S. trips, one premature marriage, and a defection later, Li joined the Houston Ballet as a principal dancer, paving his way to international fame.

Unit 3: Paper Daughter (Jeanette Ingold)

In the month after 16-year-old Maggie Chen’s father, a respected journalist, was killed in a hit-and-run accident, a basement flood destroys his notebooks. As she searches through the sodden paperwork, Maggie discovers puzzling inconsistencies. Had her father lied about his family history? Maggie, an aspiring journalist herself, is just beginning an internship at a Seattle paper, and in one of her first assignments, she uncovers a story that links directly to both the circumstances of her father’s death and to the truth about his origins.