Personal Matters: Women’s Autobiographical Practice in Twentieth-Century China - Hardcover

Lingzhen Wang

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080475005X ISBN 13: 9780804750059

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2004

Synopsis

This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to women’s autobiographical writing in twentieth-century China. The author applies feminist insights to works by such well-known authors as Qiu Jin, Bing Xin, Ding Ling, and Wang Anyi and to works by other, lesser-known writers. Throughout, these writings are analyzed in relation to the discourses of modernity―nationalism, revolution, socialism, and market commodification―that have dominated modern China. The book emphasizes aspects of women’s experience, especially their subjective, emotional, psychic, and bodily activities, that tend to be dismissed in mainstream discourses and orthodox studies of history and literature. The result is a new understanding of how women have negotiated their lives through autobiographical writing and struggled to carve out a place of their own in modern China. In turn, this study generates new insights into the gendered version of modern history, writing, and self.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

“Meticulously researched, carefully structured, and lucidly versed, Wang’s interpretation goes against and beyond a poststructuralist current among literary critics and offers a fresh, gendered avenue to discern history, self, and writing in modern China.”—CHOICE

About the Author:

Lingzhen Wang is Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at Brown University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 080475005X
• ISBN 13: 9780804750059
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 296