- Red Star over China and Helen Foster Snow
ABSTRACT
Helen Snow firmly supported Edgar Snow in successfully completing his trip to the Northwest. During his writing of Red Star over China, she was working at top speed to write up his notes and to write long captions for all the pictures. To lose no time to communicate to the Chinese masses the messages he had brought back from North Shaanxi, she compiled the book Impressions of a Foreign Journalist on the Northwest and helped its Chinese version come out before the English edition of Red Star. To ensure the author's concentration in his writing, she took on all the other work. She took a risk of her life to go to Yan'an alone to interview the Red Army commanders and soldiers whom he was unable to do in the previous year. She collected supplementary materials and took photos which were urgently needed in Red Star. She was a faithful co worker of Red Star, the first reader of Edgar Snow's manuscript and also its sharp but fair critic.
"Behind every great man is a great woman, unknown and unsung," runs the old adage. This is just the right expression to describe Helen Foster Snow, first wife of Edgar Snow and an American woman journalist and writer. Even years later after their divorce, Edgar Snow still wrote about her, in a frank way: "she was my faithful co worker, consort and critic during my eight years in Asia."①
Red Star over China was a world shaking classic written by Edgar Snow after his trip to the Soviet areas in Northern Shaanxi in the summer of 1936. One of the reasons for its success was that the author had a wealth of first hand materials, full and accurate, including many valuable pictures. It may be said that there would be no Red Star over China without his trip to the Northwest.