Point Containing Books The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices
Title | : | The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices |
Author | : | Xinran |
Book Format | : | Paperback |
Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 256 pages |
Published | : | November 11th 2003 by Anchor (first published October 2nd 2002) |
Categories | : | Nonfiction. Cultural. China. History. Asia. Biography. Womens |
Xinran
Paperback | Pages: 256 pages Rating: 4.25 | 8496 Users | 875 Reviews
Commentary In Pursuance Of Books The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices
When Deng Xiaoping’s efforts to “open up” China took root in the late 1980s, Xinran recognized an invaluable opportunity. As an employee for the state radio system, she had long wanted to help improve the lives of Chinese women. But when she was given clearance to host a radio call-in show, she barely anticipated the enthusiasm it would quickly generate. Operating within the constraints imposed by government censors, “Words on the Night Breeze” sparked a tremendous outpouring, and the hours of tape on her answering machines were soon filled every night. Whether angry or muted, posing questions or simply relating experiences, these anonymous women bore witness to decades of civil strife, and of halting attempts at self-understanding in a painfully restrictive society. In this collection, by turns heartrending and inspiring, Xinran brings us the stories that affected her most, and offers a graphically detailed, altogether unprecedented work of oral history.Details Books Toward The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices
Original Title: | The Good Women of China |
ISBN: | 1400030803 (ISBN13: 9781400030804) |
Edition Language: | English |
Setting: | Nanjing(China) Tangshan(China) Wuxi(China) …more Yangzhou(China) …less |
Literary Awards: | Kiriyama Prize Nominee for Nonfiction (2002) |
Rating Containing Books The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices
Ratings: 4.25 From 8496 Users | 875 ReviewsComment On Containing Books The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices
If I could, I would give this book 4.5*!Xinran is (was?) a Chinese journalist, who left China in 1997 in order to publish this book.After reading this book, I can understand why. "The Good Women of China" contains 15 stories, among them "The Guomindang General's Daughter", "The Woman Whose Father Does Not Know Her", "The Fashionable Woman" and "The Women of Shouting Hill" (my favorite stories), which tell of unimaginable sufferings and abuses in the hands of husbands, fathers, strangers andI am chasing my adopted daughters heritage by reading books about China, especially as it relates to abandoned and damaged daughters. If you have been reading my reviews for a while, you know that my daughter who is ten years old was abandoned in Aksu, China at the age of 3½ months. We believe that because she had a cleft lip and palate her parents were unable to nourish her so abandoned her in a safe location so someone with more access to medical resources could save her life. She was very
A very dark non-fiction account of the lives of different women interviewed in China in the 1990s by journalist Xinran, who was presenting a radio programme about the experience of Chinese women at the time. Later she came to the West and wrote the book. There are some terrible life stories here, the kind of lives where you can imagine the women wishing they had never been born. Multiple rapes, years of political imprisonment on starvation rations, insanity, loss, terror ... it's all here. At
Xinran was the presenter of a radio show in China, during which she would ask women to call her and tell her about themselves. Over the years, she gathered many stories of Chinese women, and this book contains fifteen of them, including her own. It's a diverse collection of stories, including the stories of a lesbian woman, of loveless forced marriages, of hopeless love stories, of women who were raped as children...They're eye-opening, saddening, horrifying. Xinran's matter of fact tone --
The "good women" in China, in Xin Ran stories, are not women that view as "good women" in the Chinese society. I had to do some applause for Xin Ran and those women who had shared their stories. It's wonderful and excruciating. I had never found stories as tragic as their stories. Life is just hard, but hey, they move on. They keep on living, even if it only in their own dreams. Their imagination that cannot held back by anyone. Not the government, not the society, not even the people who love
An artless collection of very unhappy stories, which could easily challenge both George R.R. Martin or de Sade for shock value.The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices is in many ways reminiscent of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China : the first-person female narrator, the overlapping cultural settings, the focus on the life of Chinese women, the videogame subtitle. Easily comparable - not for the best reasons.Works of an autobiographical nature walk a fine line between fiction and non-fiction.
No rating. I know, I know. "What? No rating?" But, this is a biography. In this book are true stories of women's lives. How can I rate someone's life? Especially when it is filled with pain and trauma? The answer is simple. I cannot. I did not enjoy this book much. The translation was poor and the narrator came across as frightfully naive. Those aren't really the main reasons though. Despite them, I couldn't put the book down. I was engrossed. I simply did not like this book because of how dark
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