Revolution Is Not A Dinner Party

Ying Chang Compestine’s, Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party, was very surreal and emotional. This story particularly stuck out to me because a 9-year-old little girl was telling it. This is what made it such an emotional read. Hearing it from her perspective gave a drastic approach to how the revolution actually was during this time. When doing the research before hand I was shocked that I had not heard about this particular revolution. Being able to read a realistic story about it explained a lot about what exactly was going on in the towns. I personally felt this to be just as bad as the Nazi Germany case. It was extremely sad to hear that families, even children, were getting sent to these work camps when they were out of line. The way it was described as them “disappearing” made it even more sad and real.  I couldn’t fathom how people work through and live through these revolutions. It is such a shocking time and I personally could not imagine dealing with these situations in our modern society today. I appreciated the read because it was factual and definitely explained the hardships for the people in this society.

The ideas that were mentioned more than once through out this book are what really caught my attention. For instance, when they kept making families or individuals “disappear”. I thought this to be hugely unfair and they did not give anyone who was out of order any time to fix their mistakes. When Mrs. Wong’s husband had disappeared this seemed to be the breaking point of what this revolution was entailing. It was interesting to hear the father talk about how the workers back at the hospital would go missing every now and then as well. I just could not believe that there was nothing to be done about these situations and everyone tried their best to move on and accept what was happening out of their control. Also, there was so much detail of what happened on their day-to-day lives that it really allowed the audience to open up to the idea of what it was like to live during this horrible time. I believe this drew in my attention because every little situation that happened to either of the families, that we got to know through the book, really helped to grasp and feel for each individual.

Overall, I believe this is a great read and it is something that needs to be taught more often or even just recognized because I am still in shock that I had yet to learn about this revolution. I feel this would be a great read for younger kids because it gives the sense of what has happened in the past that we do not necessarily hear about in our daily lives. I also believe it will make many understand how lucky and privileged they really are. We take so much for granted sometimes that we do not recognize or give thanks to all that we have. This is a book that will make someone realize this and begin to appreciate the finer things in life.