Rae Yang (born January 15, 1947) is a Chinese-American author best known for her memoir, Spider Eaters, which recounts her experiences growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution. In Spider Eaters, Yang details her unwavering devotion to Chairman Mao Zedong as a young girl, her participation in the Red Guard, and her eventual disillusionment with the political system. The book provides a firsthand account of the upheaval and social engineering that characterized that period of Chinese history. Yang's writing offers a critical perspective on the human cost of political extremism and the complexities of identity formation in a tumultuous environment. After leaving China, she earned a PhD in American Literature from the University of Delaware. She has also written articles on the Cultural Revolution.
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