Writing Women in Modern China

Spanning the first three decades of this century to the Sino-Japanese War, these twenty-two works of fiction, drama, autobiography, essays, and poetry, each newly translated and prefaced by the author's photograph and a short biographical sketch, introduce women whose literary careers coincided with an era of tremendous social, political, and cultural turbulence.

Writing Women in Modern China is the first major anthology in English to highlight the contributions of women to modern literary culture with respect to the heated gender debates of early twentieth-century China. Featuring examples of fiction, drama, autobiography, essays, and poetry by eighteen writers, many of whom have been neglected by mainstream literary history, this collection demonstrates the creative diversity in modern women's writing. The editors' introduction charts key developments in the study of gender, literature, and women's writing in modern China and provides an overview of the relevant historical events of this century's first three decades. From Qiu Jin's experimental narrative Stones of the Kingwei Bird, one of the earliest fictional representations of women's liberation from the traditional Confucian family, to Bing Xin's "Our Mistress's Parlor," which presents a satire of an intellectual salon in 1930s Shanghai, Writing Women in Modern China offers an unrivaled opportunity to explore an important body of imaginative work.