Cover news reporter Zhang Jie
March 8 International Women's Day is coming, we hope that through reading women's own writings, or those that write about women's living conditions and spiritual worlds, we can deeper understand women's love and sorrow, glimpse their concerns and expectations for the world, and the world and real life they have experienced and observed.
"Inseparable"
[French] Simone de Beauvoir by Cao Dongxue translated
Motie Books & Zhejiang Education Publishing House
Five years after the publication of The Second Sex, Beauvoir began writing Inseparable. She destroyed a lot of works, but never this one. During her lifetime, the work was not made public. This is also the first time that the manuscript of this novel has been published after more than 60 years of dust. The novel is based on Beauvoir's best friend Zaza in her teenage years, and writes about the friendship and growth process of two maverick and rebellious girls who entangled their lives, understanding and supporting each other. Perhaps only women can understand women's difficult situations and spiritual needs. She once said, "The reason I wrote the books that made me famous was to write about my girlhood."
Beauvoir published many novels during her lifetime, but she is best known for her political and philosophical work. This book will provide a new perspective on Beauvoir's growth and development as a writer. The author of "The Handmaid's Tale" and the Canadian female writer Atwood gave a guide to this work and gave it high praise. Fu Lei Translation Award winner Cao Dongxue translated with heart. Some commentators have said that from "Inseparable", in Beauvoir's youth, the relationship that deeply affected her was not with Sartre, but with her friend Zaza.
The Woman Through the Wilderness
Su Weizhen Liu Jun Editor-in-Chief
Nanjing University Publishing Company
In the history of Chinese literature, we will see Qu Yuan, Sima Qian, Li Bai, Du Fu, Su Dongpo, Guan Hanqing, Cao Xueqin, Pu Songling... These highlight-illuminated names are all male. There are very few female writers like Li Qingzhao and Cai Wenji who can be blurted out. After 1919, groups of female writers began to appear, and more and more female writers came into view. This book selects 31 novels by many of the most representative Chinese women writers in the twentieth century from the origin of new literature.
These include Ling Shuhua's "Mid-Autumn Festival Evening", Xiao Hong's "The Death of Wang A-sister-in-law", Bingxin's "Autumn Rain and Autumn Wind Sorrowful People", Lu Yin's "Lishi's Diary", Chen Hengzhe's "A Woman in Wuxia", Feng Yuanjun's "Travel", Lin Huiyin: "Zhong Green", Ding Ling's "When I Was in Xia Village", Zhang Ailing's "Heart Sutra", Su Qing's "Moth", Shi Jimei's "Tragedy and Comedy", Lin Haiyin's "Martyrdom", Tong Zhen's "Woman Through the Wilderness", Ru Zhijuan's "Lily Flower", Ouyang Zi's "Metamorphosis", Yu Lihua's "Woman in the Evening Corridor", Shi Shuqing's "Woman in the Corridor" Gecko", Wang Anyi "Rain, Rustling", Xixi: "A Woman Like Me", Zhu Tiantian", etc. Both the author of the novel and the protagonist of the novel are women. Women writing women, as a century of Chinese women's novels, not only allows us to see the rich literary skills and characteristics of female writers, but also to see the evolution of China's female image in the past hundred years.
Selected Chinese Women's Literature in 2021
Zhang Li, Editor
Tianjin People's Publishing House
Zhang Li, a professor at the College of Literature of Beijing Normal University, will select and compile a "Chinese Women's Literature Annual Anthology" every year from 2019, 2020 to 2021. And every year the theme is fixed: love, secrets, far away. Why are these three words set as a fixed theme? Zhang Li believes that love, secrets, and distant places are the themes of everyone's life, regardless of gender. For example, in the "far away" part, most readers have the impression that female writers write more about family life, so she deliberately set up such a theme, including Liang Hong's "Lost", Huang Tongtong's "The Unexpected Life of Fashion Journalist Li Xiaofeng", Shen Dacheng's "Miss Box Man" and so on. For these female writers, the far side is the far side of time and space, or the far side of thinking, which is a kind of freedom, and it may also be the future. "I hope that through such themes, readers will be able to understand the different temperaments of women's literature than in the past." Zhang Li said.
Zhang Li also specifically mentioned that female writers do not necessarily write women's literature, such as some works are keen to discuss "the domineering president fell in love with me", keen to analyze how to marry rich people, etc., that even if female writers write, it is also from a male standpoint to "discipline" women, which is definitely not women's literature. Of course, women's literature is not about women, its main point is to write about women, including the difficulty of writing women, women's narrowness, women's problems; the most important thing is to speak from the marginal, weak position.
Between Friends: Letters of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy
Hannah Arendt Mary McCarthy by Carol Brightman, ed. Zhang Yan, translation
CITIC Press
They first met in New York in 1944: the philosopher Hannah Arendt had just escaped Nazi Germany, and the talented Mary McCarthy was making her debut in American literature. The two soon became friends and began a 25-year round trip between fish and geese. In the letters, they argue about current affairs, but also discuss literature, pour out emotions, and gossip. Between Friends contains all correspondence between Arendt and McCarthy. Arendt and McCarthy's letters are rigorous, sharp, full of wisdom and eloquence, and sincere and intimate.
In a private way, the collection of letters provides us with a close look at the political, moral, literary and ideological contexts of two outstanding women of the 20th century, vividly showing a corner of their hearts. It also shows us the long and unique friendship between them. After looking into it, you can very much appreciate the truth and beauty of their friendship that has lasted for 25 years. There is no social courtesy of hypocrisy, and what is written down is the real feelings of the heart. Not diluted by the passage of time, not alienated by changes in location.
"Mulan Gets Married"
Hu Hui
China Workers Publishing House
Mulan Married is a collection of non-fiction writings that contains the true stories of 15 women. They are young or are getting old, or married or single, or in difficult situations or have taken a long step, they face a variety of complex and subtle environments and challenges in dealing with their relationship with themselves and the world. They experience growth, they appreciate the beauty of human feelings in the world, and they also confront the hardships, absurdities and impermanence of life.
No matter how old the reader is and where he is, he can see the dignity and preciousness of human nature in "Mulan Marriage" and see the flash of hope that cannot be ignored. The stories of the "Mulan" are bright and sharp, allowing us to see the complex truth of human nature, and Hu Hui's pen leads us to believe that beautiful things still exist. The author Hu Hui, born in 1990 in Ningxiang, Hunan, is a master's degree in creative writing from the Department of Chinese of Fudan University.
Elizabeth II: The Queen's Journey
Author: [English] Robert Hardeman
Translator: Hong Cuihui
Publisher: Cultural Development Press
She has visited more than 130 countries around the world on business and traveled more than 1 million nautical miles at sea. She unveiled the Olympics in London, became queen on fig trees in Africa, watched hula dancing on small islands in the Pacific, and ate donuts in Canada. You could say that the Queen is either traveling or preparing to travel.
The book introduces Queen Elizabeth II from a novel perspective, both as a politician and as a globe-traveler. Under these two identities, she is a woman with a unique charm. She will encounter embarrassing moments for women on the road, overcome many difficulties, and also show the charm of women. If it weren't for the Queen, Elizabeth would have been a travel guru who could talk to you for hours of travel tips. When her clothes get wet on a rainy day, the queen prefers to stand and dry because she knows it's easier to fold when she sits down. The skirt can be sewn with some small lead weights, which not only maintains the shape of the dress, but also prevents the so-called makeup accident - that is, the wind blowing up the skirt. Elizabeth II showed off the multiple charms of a woman on the road, navigating cumbersome royal rules and diplomatic etiquette, and modern women who switch between the workplace and the journey may smile when they read her story.
"Yan Shangzhu in the Mirror"
Author: Siren
Yilin Publishing House
Siren, a girl from Huangshi, Hubei Province, left her hometown at the age of 27 and traveled to the warm southern country thousands of miles away. After coming to Guangdong, I have traveled to many places, engaged in a variety of occupations, and also seen that under the industrial upgrading, a stubble of workers has come and gone. In an age of speed, Siren thought about those who walked slowly, about to disappear, and to leave a little mark on their existence. The stars are scattered, but they also leave a trace of the development of the times.
In her pen, there is her father when she was young, her cousin who dedicated her life to Chu Opera, the stubborn and tenacious friends in the steel factory, the migrant workers on the assembly line in the big factory, and the bird trainers who are about to disappear... These people will not appear in the magnesium light of the times, but in them, we can feel the rough real life, and we can see their heavy soul shining.
Literary critic Li Jingze once commented that Siren is a diamond in China's prose world. Siren is a "barbaric growth" writer, from the early workers, to the later newspaper reporters, editors, business managers, etc., Siren's non-professional background and rich life experience, so that she is closer to the fierce real life, more able to empathize with the characters in the pen, so it has also formed a unique writing feature.
"Poor Japanese Woman"
[Japanese] Hiroko Iijima by Lü Lingzhi translated
Nova Press
Forced to live in their parents' homes due to low wages; excessive pressure to urge marriage around them; careers, husbands, and children, nothing; highly educated, working but poor "poor and busy people"; "poor women" with many friends, cheerful and optimistic but low income; "hit workers" who are deeply trapped in workplace PUA and bullying and depression; ... This book is a transcript of Hiroko Iijima's interviews with 47 women.
The author directly addresses the group of poor women in Japan and examines in detail their living conditions, employment, marriage and childbearing. It was found that women, especially poor women, were often marginalized and thus shrouded in a huge shadow, especially in the social focus, compared to men who remained in the social focus. More importantly, women are often obscured by men's discourse or the tendencies of society as a whole, which in turn makes women's poverty worse. This book can be called a "picture book of poor women". The author, Yuko Iijima, is a non-fiction writer born in Tokyo, Japan. He graduated from hitotsubashi University with a master's degree in sociology and has worked as a special newspaper reporter and magazine editor.