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4.27 AVERAGE
4.27 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
fast-paced
Brutal.
Lost mu ebook and I don't like it enough for buying it now
dark
informative
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Sexual harassment
Moderate: Rape, Self harm, Suicide
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Cried like 4 times, and am sure i will be carrying this book and thinking about it for a long time after this. The stories are shocking and i had to constantly remind myself that these were TRUE stories and every time i did it felt like the stories settled heavier within me. This is one i would definitely read again.
Have you ever seen a stranger or on a bus and wondered what kind of past they have had? This is a book voicing the fates of faces that are lost in crowds.
Xinran hosted a radio call-in show on feminist issues, “Words on the Night Breeze” from 1989 to 1997 which was hugely popular in China. and which brought forth the stories of women from different sections of society, bringing the ugly face of communist China. Almost all stories contain elements of horrible violence, sexual assault, and social suppression and are greatly depressing. Moreover, many of incidences of violence are met out to them when they were children. The problems faced by the women take many forms - rape cases, kidnapping of girls for forced marriage because village lacks daughter due to female foeticide, bullying of children because their parents are Japanese or use foreign goods - sometimes to extent of turning them mentally unstable, people so poor that all sisters of a family shared a single dress which they wore in turns, since all the little clothing the family went to sons.
The stories themselves are worth reading as they draw a kind of social history of Maoist China - with its government control on media, denial of fundamental rights, poverty etc besides doing the service to victims of a ridiculous patriarchy. The patriarchy and poverty creates such ugly forms everywhere in East, but the problems arising out of communism are of unique form,
The trouble is they need a better writer to present them. Xinran keeps on using the phrase 'Chinese women' repeatedly to the point that you would believe that they were some sort of exotic animal species or that she herself wasn't one of them. I mean I know it is your buzzword, but come on, Initially when she kept talking about wanting to know Chinese women, I thought she might have done her studies outside China and so knew little about her country, but no, she had always lived in China. The repeated use of national adjective 'Chinese' instead of using something like 'our women' or 'women in our country' or simply 'women' leaves one with the feeling that the book is written for a foreign audience. And in the last chapter, Xinran confirms it. I think if you want to write about problems of a country. you should assume your primary audience to be people of that country. I am no fan of this foreign reporting thing. And so it is four stars, instead of five stars. There are some other issues too.
Some of the stories would have left a more powerful impact on the reader if Xinran had let the victims finish their story without frequently breaking in to remind how emotional she is as listens to them - most journalists do let people speak for themselves.
It is a translation so, may be, the ridiculously simple language can be forgiven.
There are too many coincidences in these stories which take away their credibility - to take an example, Xinran is told by her father about a couple from his college who were separated by revolution, and she is then told about an unknown woman staying at a hotel who later turns out to be the woman her father talked about.
A woman falls in love for Xinran and later thinks that she is homosexual since she was raised like a man or since she had come to hate men, an observation which she generalises to all homosexual women. Maybe excusable in a country where even married women do not understand sex properly.
Also, it is part biography so she writes about her own childhood sufferings and that of her parents - okay but she must also tell you about office politics, how everyone envies her and so on.
Some of these are minor annoyances but they take the focus away from wothwhile things. Definitly worth reading if you are after knowledge rather than mere reading experience.
Xinran hosted a radio call-in show on feminist issues, “Words on the Night Breeze” from 1989 to 1997 which was hugely popular in China. and which brought forth the stories of women from different sections of society, bringing the ugly face of communist China. Almost all stories contain elements of horrible violence, sexual assault, and social suppression and are greatly depressing. Moreover, many of incidences of violence are met out to them when they were children. The problems faced by the women take many forms - rape cases, kidnapping of girls for forced marriage because village lacks daughter due to female foeticide, bullying of children because their parents are Japanese or use foreign goods - sometimes to extent of turning them mentally unstable, people so poor that all sisters of a family shared a single dress which they wore in turns, since all the little clothing the family went to sons.
The stories themselves are worth reading as they draw a kind of social history of Maoist China - with its government control on media, denial of fundamental rights, poverty etc besides doing the service to victims of a ridiculous patriarchy. The patriarchy and poverty creates such ugly forms everywhere in East, but the problems arising out of communism are of unique form,
The trouble is they need a better writer to present them. Xinran keeps on using the phrase 'Chinese women' repeatedly to the point that you would believe that they were some sort of exotic animal species or that she herself wasn't one of them. I mean I know it is your buzzword, but come on, Initially when she kept talking about wanting to know Chinese women, I thought she might have done her studies outside China and so knew little about her country, but no, she had always lived in China. The repeated use of national adjective 'Chinese' instead of using something like 'our women' or 'women in our country' or simply 'women' leaves one with the feeling that the book is written for a foreign audience. And in the last chapter, Xinran confirms it. I think if you want to write about problems of a country. you should assume your primary audience to be people of that country. I am no fan of this foreign reporting thing. And so it is four stars, instead of five stars. There are some other issues too.
Some of the stories would have left a more powerful impact on the reader if Xinran had let the victims finish their story without frequently breaking in to remind how emotional she is as listens to them - most journalists do let people speak for themselves.
It is a translation so, may be, the ridiculously simple language can be forgiven.
There are too many coincidences in these stories which take away their credibility - to take an example, Xinran is told by her father about a couple from his college who were separated by revolution, and she is then told about an unknown woman staying at a hotel who later turns out to be the woman her father talked about.
A woman falls in love for Xinran and later thinks that she is homosexual since she was raised like a man or since she had come to hate men, an observation which she generalises to all homosexual women. Maybe excusable in a country where even married women do not understand sex properly.
Also, it is part biography so she writes about her own childhood sufferings and that of her parents - okay but she must also tell you about office politics, how everyone envies her and so on.
Some of these are minor annoyances but they take the focus away from wothwhile things. Definitly worth reading if you are after knowledge rather than mere reading experience.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Suicide
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
https://youtu.be/w2fIU59SMlY my review on YouTube if you are interested
One of the most emotional, teardropping books I've ever read.
Cuốn sách này miêu tả một Trung Quốc rất khác dưới lời kể của một nhà báo nữ giới, người dẫn chương trình của đài phát thanh Trung Quốc, nói về những câu chuyện mà bà đã được nghe từ những người phụ nữ ở những vùng đất khác nhau, thật đến đau thương, đau thương tới bóp nghẹt tâm can nước mắt nghèn nghẹn trong lòng. Biết là giới thiệu để nhiều người biết đến tác phẩm hơn, nhưng với cuốn này mình xin phép chèn cảnh báo nho nhỏ: những ai tâm hồn đang mong manh xin lùi lại 3 bước, đợi khi nào chuẩn bị sẵn tinh thần hơn thì hãy đọc.
Đọc thêm: https://yuu3008.com/2022/06/12/hao-nu-trung-hoa-han-nhien/
Đọc thêm: https://yuu3008.com/2022/06/12/hao-nu-trung-hoa-han-nhien/