In this Book
University of California Press
- The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past
- Book
- 2011
- Published by: University of California Press
- Series: Asia Pacific Modern
summary
What can we learn about the Chinese revolution by placing a doubly marginalized group—rural women—at the center of the inquiry? In this book, Gail Hershatter explores changes in the lives of seventy-two elderly women in rural Shaanxi province during the revolutionary decades of the 1950s and 1960s. Interweaving these women’s life histories with insightful analysis, Hershatter shows how Party-state policy became local and personal, and how it affected women’s agricultural work, domestic routines, activism, marriage, childbirth, and parenting—even their notions of virtue and respectability. The women narrate their pasts from the vantage point of the present and highlight their enduring virtues, important achievements, and most deeply harbored grievances. In showing what memories can tell us about gender as an axis of power, difference, and collectivity in 1950s rural China and the present, Hershatter powerfully examines the nature of socialism and how gender figured in its creation.
Table of Contents
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- Acknowledgments
- pp. xi-xiv
- Introduction
- pp. 1-12
- 2: No One Is Home
- pp. 32-64
- 4: Activist
- pp. 96-128
- 6: Midwife
- pp. 154-181
- 9: Laborer
- pp. 236-266
- 10: Narrator
- pp. 267-288
- Appendix: Interviews
- pp. 289-292
- References
- pp. 411-442
- Production Notes
- p. 456
- Image Plates
- pp. 457-464
Additional Information
ISBN
9780520950344
Related ISBN(s)
9780520267701
MARC Record
OCLC
739107920
Pages
472
Launched on MUSE
2014-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No