Reviews

To Live and to Write: Selections by Japanese Women Writers, 1913-1938 by Hiroko M. Malatesta, Elizabeth Hanson, Yukiko Tanaka

rremer's review

4.0

This was an interesting read for me. I think the best part was seeing literary trends from a time before I was born written for a culture I'm not part of. These women writers became prominent in a time when each and every one of them were unlikely to succeed just because they were women. Seeing the themes they wrote about and many of the stories being at least semi-autobiographical makes me feel like I've learned at least a little bit more about both what it meant to be a Japanese women in this time as well as what it means to be a woman today. Many of the things these writers struggled with are still current issues today.

nmcannon's review

5.0

This book was incredible. Each story spoke of the writers' strength and endurance through supremely difficult times, and I ate it up. These women conquered poverty, hunger, censorship, and patriarchy to write beautiful, destructive, and soul-punching words. Simply put: these ladies are SO FREAKING HARDCORE, DUDE.

I read this book to research for a short story, and I wasn't disappointed. Each short story is preceded with a mini-biography of the author, so now I have pages of notes in my notebook about Japanese women writers during the period. I admire them so much, and I scribbled down titles of their full works to read later. Awesome read!