Women Writers in Postsocialist China

Women’s writing in post-Socialist China has seen phenomenal growth in recent years, and this book examines this growth and its relationship to the transformation of women’s lives. The book focuses on four genres of women’s writing - life narratives and autobiographical fiction, popular literature, historical biographies and oral narratives - emerging out of the transcultural flow of ideas between western and indigenous Chinese feminisms. Together, these contemporary forms of writing represent a feminist labour of women who consciously conceptualise their work as an active force in cultural construction and transformation, and carve out a previously under-explored space for women’s desires, subjectivities and identities in post-Soviet China. The book argues that the discrete historical and political contexts which shape the writing have a direct bearing on global feminist theory and practice, and this critical study of selected genres and writers highlight the shifts in feminist perspectives within the contemporary local and global cultural landscape.