May Fourth Women Writers: Memoirs, and: A Girl like Me and Other Stories (review)

Reviews 215© 1999 by University ofHawai'i Press function, the election process will become more competitive, and judicial powers will be exercised more independendy. Nathan is not oblivious of the many hurdles that stand between the ideas ofreform and the reality of Chinese institutional weaknesses. Lastly, Nathan is insistent that Western human rights pressure wül help in promoting this change (chapter 16, "Human Rights and American China Policy"). One important element missing from Nathan's work is a discussion ofthe stunted development ofthe Chinese legal system; democracy, after all, is inconceivable without the rule oflaw. However, the essays in China's Transition are scholarly and well written, and even though they lack the kind of focus one would have wished, they do provide perceptive insights into the political history ofcommunist China. Ranbir Vohra Ranbir Vohra is CharlesA. Dana Professor ofPolitical Science (Emeritus) at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. Janet Ng and Janice Wickeri, editors. May Fourth Women Writers: Memoirs. A Renditions Paperback. Hong Kong: Research Centre for Translation, Chinese University ofHong Kong, 1996. 133 pp. Paperback U.S. $14.95, 1SBN 962-7255-17-3. Xi Xi. A Girl like Me and Other Stories. A Renditions Paperback. Hong Kong: Research Centre for Translation, Chinese University ofHong Kong, (Enlarged Edition) 1996. 134 pp. Paperback $14.95, isbn 962-7255-19-x. These two Renditions Paperbacks contribute to the growing number ofbooks in English whose focus is Chinese women writers. Believing in the common perception that modernization was the only means to save the nation from the encroachments on China's sovereignty by the industrialized nations ofthe West and Japan, in the May Fourth period young, educated Chinese men and women spoke with a strong, united voice in articulating their demands for freedom and equality ofthe individual. Young writers were in the vanguard ofthat movement, and the notion ofthe primacy ofthe individual selfhas been enshrined in the creative literature of that period. 2i6 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. i, Spring 1999 In recent years it has been acknowledged, and in some cases decried, that the May Fourth literary canons are predominantly portrayals ofthe male self, and that critical studies on the literature of this period have tended to ignore the contributions ofwomen writers. However, this slighting ofliterature by women is not unique to the Chinese context; a similar phenomenon can be seen in the early history ofWestern industrialization. Compared to men there were significantly fewer literate women, and in the family context, women were burdened by the social requirement to submit to the husband's family, to nurture the sacred seed that would produce male heirs, to bear the responsibility for caring for offspring as well as managing domestic chores, and to conform to the entrenched belief that a woman must place the needs ofher husband, his family, and his children above her own concerns and interests. In the case of China, these burdens were compounded by the difficulty oflearning a non-phonetic written language and by die fact that it was only in the May Fourth period that the vernacular language gradually came to replace the classical language in literature. Moreover, aspiring Chinese women writers had to deal with these problems against the backdrop of the traumatic events of twentieth-century China. These two anthologies of translation under review contribute to a corrective against past male dominance; they are significant documents that unambiguously project Chinese women onto center stage: the writers and protagonists are women, and their perceptions, sensitivities, and interests are distinctively female literary articulations on the realities that they face. Whereas during the May Fourth period Chinese writers had to fight against anti-individual Confucian traditions, in the 1980s they had to contend with anti-individual Maoist traditions. For Chinese women, gender-related repression, oppression, and inequality on a number offronts meant that their struggle for self-expression both as individuals and in literature has been significantly harder than for their male counterparts. The offerings in May Fourth Women Writers: Memoirs and A Girl like Me and Other Stories are halfa century apart. In the latter, the stories "A Girl like Me" and "The Cold" are disturbing indications that gender equality has advanced but little and that women...