Enduring the Revolution: Ding Ling and the Politics of Literature in Guomindang China - Hardcover

Alber, Charles J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0275972356 ISBN 13: 9780275972356

Publisher: Praeger, 2001

Synopsis

An anarchist by temperament, the beautiful and talented Ding Ling attempted to find her way in the world alone. She had a few female friends and a few significant male others, but she rebelled against her family. Most importantly, she rebelled against the Chinese Communist Party to which she desperately hoped to belong. The first part of a comprehensive biography of the major 20th century Chinese author, Ding Ling, this work draws not only on her memoirs, but on numerous secondary sources, many of which have become available only in the last two decades.

Though born into a wealthy family, Jiang Bingzi was raised by her mother after the untimely death of her father. She went to school in the May 4 era, when protest was in the air, the radical ideas of Mao were already in print, and her idol, Lu Xun, was making his literary mark. In her late teens she renounced her engagement, changed her name, and fled to Shanghai where she embraced the anarchist movement. The loss of her brother and lifelong friend, Wang Jianhong, and the loss of her significant other, Hu Yepin, all threw her into various states of depression, not to mention her own abduction by the Guomindang.

Nevertheless, Ding Ling wrote her way out of despair and into the public limelight. Her first collection of short stories, In the Darkness, made her famous because of its profound grasp of feminine psychology and its daring treatment of human sexuality. But when Ding Ling attempted to dispel the darkness in Yan'an, she, like everyone else, was told by Mao in his famous Talks to focus on the light. Ding Ling made all the necessary adjustments, literary and political. She survived the rectification campaign and mastered proletarian fiction. Mao loved her novel The Sun Shines on the Sanggan so much that he ranked her third among contemporaries. Soon, she was traveling to Eastern Europe and to Moscow where she consulted with Soviet notables. With the founding of the People's Republic, it appeared her star was on the rise. This study of Ding Ling and China's literary environment in the first half of the 20th century will be useful to scholars and students of contemporary Chinese history, literature, and women's studies.

About this title

About the Author:

CHARLES J. ALBER is Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of South Carolina. He has published articles on Lu Xun and Ding Ling as well as translated and edited V.I. Semanov's Lu Hsun and His Predecessors. Professor Alber currently is writing a sequel to the present work.

Review:

..."offers an engrossing literary history of Ding Ling (1904-86, pseudonym of Jiang Wei, more often known as Jiang Bingzhi), from her childhood to the climactic mid-century point, when her novel in praise of Maoist land reform, The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River (1949; Eng. tr., 1984), received a Stalin Prize....this book makes a significant contribution to modern Chinese literary history and its socio-political backdrop. All academic collections."-Choice

?...offers an engrossing literary history of Ding Ling (1904-86, pseudonym of Jiang Wei, more often known as Jiang Bingzhi), from her childhood to the climactic mid-century point, when her novel in praise of Maoist land reform, The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River (1949; Eng. tr., 1984), received a Stalin Prize....this book makes a significant contribution to modern Chinese literary history and its socio-political backdrop. All academic collections.?-Choice

.,."offers an engrossing literary history of Ding Ling (1904-86, pseudonym of Jiang Wei, more often known as Jiang Bingzhi), from her childhood to the climactic mid-century point, when her novel in praise of Maoist land reform, The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River (1949; Eng. tr., 1984), received a Stalin Prize....this book makes a significant contribution to modern Chinese literary history and its socio-political backdrop. All academic collections."-Choice

"Ding Ling is already one of the most controversial and widely discussed Chinese writers of the twentieth century, male or female; Charles Alber's absolutely spellbinding book ups the ante for both her admirers and detractors. Alber's sober and authoritative evaluations of newly available written sources, supplemented by his own interviews of Ding Ling and other Chinese literary figures, unearth the fast-fading and persistently covered-over trails of a whole generation of China's communist writers. His eye for the telling detail may have brought us about as close as we can get to the inner worlds of authors who went to hell and back without ever achieving self-knowledge."-Jeffrey C. Kinkly Professor of History St. Johns University, New York

"Charles J. Alber has written a splendid study of Ding Ling, China's most prominent female writer of the revolutionary era. Beginning with an enticing Preface about how he came to the topic, Alber's book is exhaustively researched, measured in judgment, and well written. He has unearthed some fascinating incidents and quotes, and he gives a clear-eyed picture of the complex and far from angelic Ding Ling. Everyone interested in the Chinese Communist movement, its cultural policies, and its tragic evolution from liberation to repression will find Embracing the Revolution rewarding reading."-Ross Terrill author Mao, China in Our Time, and Madame Mao

About this edition

• Publisher: Praeger
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0275972356
• ISBN 13: 9780275972356
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288