Much of the recent English-language scholarship on the People's Republic of China during the Mao era (1949–76) has attempted to complicate, if not counter outright, the carefully crafted narratives of official history put forth and policed by the Party-state.Footnote ¹ Edited by Sebastian Veg, Popular Memories of the Mao Era might best be considered a methodological meditation on this larger historiographic trend. At primary issue is the proliferation in the early twenty-first century of unofficial sources, circulating across media and in a variety of forms, dating from or retrospectively about the Mao period. These sources constitute both an opportunity and a challenge for historical inquiry. On the one hand, they often offer invaluable information and insights into topics that are underexplored because they are politically sensitive. On the other hand, the volume argues, expressions of “popular memory,” which comprise “a broad set of narratives dealing with the past … that are often contentious,” are not in and of themselves “history,” which is “defined more narrowly as a body of socially and politically sanctioned knowledge about the past, underpinned by a measure of professional or social consensus” (p. 10). For those of us ostensibly in the business of making history in this sense, memory is—marvelously, but also problematically—messy.

Popular Memories of the Mao Era promises to lean into the messiness, emphasizing historiographic process over empiricist truth-claims. As Veg puts it in the volume's introduction, the goal of the collection is to focus “precisely on the processes of private production, public dissemination, and social sanctioning of narratives of the past, whereby memory is transformed into history” (p. 10). The question of “truth” is deemed rather beside the point. Instead, we are presented with a vision of the relationship between memory and history that is dynamic, with much wider implications than the morality—or lack thereof—of the Party-state. That the latter has sought to monopolize the tools of history-making is well known, but by situating this endeavor within a broader framework of memory-cum-history, it emerges as part of a larger story in which we are all implicated, a story, in other words, not merely concerned with the mechanics of hegemony.

The volume's ten core chapters are divided into three parts. Part one, “Unofficial Memories in the Public Sphere: Journals, Internet, Museums,” provides a glimpse at public forms of remembrance and narrative, broadly construed. Here, the pairing of Jean-Philippe Béja's overview of “independent” journals on the Mao era and Wu Si's first-hand account of negotiating censorship at the state-sponsored journal Yanhuang chunqiu (Annals of the Yellow Emperor) is particularly effective in demonstrating the labor and political acumen required to make history out of memory. Kirk Denton's look at the Jianchuan Museum Cluster in Anren, Sichuan, likewise considers the creation of (institutionalized) spaces in which privately held collections stage public narratives about the past.

Part two, “Critical Memory and Cultural Practices: Reconfiguring Elite and Popular Discourse,” enacts a turn towards cultural products—literature, film, and art, to be more precise—as sources of and vehicles for memory and history. Among the section's three chapters, Aihe Wang's contribution on the underground art scene during the waning years of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) stands out for its sophisticated examination of painting as a materially specific, social mnemonic practice. As a participant in the Wuming group (literally, “nameless”) about which she writes, Wang has insight into how a painting can operate as memory (or not) as well as the methodological challenges of writing a history of and through such artistic works.

Finally, part three, “Unofficial Sources and Popular Historiography: New Discourses of Knowledge on the Mao Era,” focuses on sources and voices much more explicitly outside of or in opposition to the purview of the Party-state. Daniel Leese's work with official investigative case file documents, some of which are now accessible through unofficial means, is particularly innovative in the Chinese context and sheds important light on the articulation of personal self-positioning and political campaigns.

At its best, Popular Memories of the Mao Era makes good on its interest in the ways in which history is forged out of and through memory. It does not always succeed in this arena, however. The Party-state looms so large at times, especially in part three, for example, that the volume's overarching theme of memory and history is dwarfed by it. In short, there are moments when Popular Memories of the Mao Era falls into the very hegemonic/counterhegemonic “truth” trap it apparently intended to avoid. While these moments are unfortunate, the collection as a whole remains valuable to both those working on the history of the Mao period and scholars of the contemporary PRC. At a minimum, the former will find a tremendous number of new sources to mine, all conveniently referenced in one publication. Indeed, in this regard, the volume may well become a go-to resource for those hoping to break new methodological ground. Those interested in exploring today's PRC, on the other hand, now have a new accounting of popular memory-work in the early twenty-first century.