"Women are not born, but acquired." Beauvoir said so.
Most of the women's day lists brought by the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Book Review are biographies published in the past two years, and they are the vivid life experiences of women. "If a woman hears her own voice in another woman's story, she becomes brave, and her thin voice becomes a chorus." I hope that through reading, we can understand how women are "shaped" and how women can become "game breakers" in their own lives.
Become Beauvoir
By Kate Kirkpatrick
Translated by Liu Haiping
CITIC Press
March 2021
"Becoming Beauvoir" is a new authoritative biography of Beauvoir based on newly exposed Beauvoir letters, early diaries and other materials in recent years. This seminal biography introduces entirely new materials such as Beauvoir's previously unpublished diaries and letters, pulling her out of Sartre's shadow and putting her in her own spotlight. This biography will present the reader with a more realistic and three-dimensional Beauvoir and also let us re-examine the relationship between Beauvoir and Sartre.
The book will also present many previously unknown personal details of Beauvoir that will enhance the mystery of Beauvoir and make us even more fascinated by Beauvoir. Why does this "feminist icon" focus on creating his own image? Why did she frequently "lie" about her relationship with Sartre or claim that she was not a philosopher? Perhaps with these new details, we can go a step further and get to know the real Beauvoir.
Game Breakers: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World
By Lindell Gordon
Translated by Hu Xiaoran/Xiao Yizhi/Xu Xiaofan
Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House
August 2021
Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schleiner, Virginia Woolf, how did they overcome the obstacles in the path of women to become writers? The speakers who come out of the shadows and silence, this is their own and common growth novel. In the face of these shining names and the world famous books they left behind, Lindell Gordon's brushstrokes return to the moment when each of them is "on the sidelines", stripping away the cocoon and slowly spreading the silence, darkness, loneliness, crisis and dilemma in the fabric of their lives. It is these moments that make them possible to fall into the boundless abyss at any time, bringing them unlimited potential and infinite creative energy. Biographer Lindell Gordon opened this passage from obscurity to writing himself into history with detailed materials.
"The Cultivation of Ordinary Women"
Jiang Goose
Republic of Beijing Daily Press
October 2021
"The Cultivation of Ordinary Women" is the most representative collection of prose stories by Taiwanese writer Jiang Ge, writing the growth story of an ordinary girl in Tainan with a refreshing and neat text: the fun daily life with Grandma, the life of a fart worm in a Chinese medicine room, learning piano, a person's scientific experiment in the afternoon, the education of love, the initial enlightenment of female consciousness, and the inner small theater of children. In the various fragments of life that can and cannot be said to others, it is written how a girl grows up little by little, slowly glimpses and enters the adult world, examines those that occur in herself, about family affection, love, marriage, dignity and inferiority, human sophistication and many other upbringing and bondage, step by step to become self-aware, free, true and stretched.
No matter how inevitably life weeps, there is not a moment that does not look forward to rejoicing. Adults and children guard the warmth and bustle of the home together, and also cope with the absurdity of the times together. Twenty-eight light, stretched and witty essays not only recall the childhood era in memory, but also show the contrast between thoughts and emotions, and understand women who grew up in this era and environment from a broader perspective. "The Cultivation of Ordinary Women" is not only the growth history of an ordinary girl, but also a true portrayal of all contemporary women who live seriously between the new and the old of the times, no longer following the blueprint of a good and good woman, and choosing a more comfortable way of life. Everyone's growth has both the imprint of the times and the logic of life itself, looking back on the past is to record growth, but also to clarify the way, and shake hands with this ordinary self.
"I Am Fragrant"
By Yang Benfen
Lefu Culture Beijing United Publishing Company
February 2022
The world can't see me, but I see me. What waves are hidden in the lives of ordinary people? How many invisible women are there in Chinese marriages?
Following "Autumn Garden" and "Driftwood", Grandma Octogenarian told the story of sixty years of marriage, wrote about the pain and confusion that no one knew, brought resonance and courage to thousands of women, and dedicated it to all you and me who were not seen.
"Room N Tracking"
(Han) Trace the spark of the group
Translated by Ye Leilei
Boji Tianjuan, Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House
In March 2020, the South Korean Room N incident shocked the world, and the problem of digital sex crimes entered the public eye. In Room N, women, including minors, were threatened with filming illegal sex videos. The picture is incomprehensible, and the means are extremely cruel. The perpetrator has no remorse, spreads it at will, and even profits from it.
In the nightmare of digital sex crime, who will protect children and create a safe world? Who could have predicted how close women are to sex crimes? In a society where women are not safe, where will others go? As the original reporter and policeman of the Room N incident, the tracking group Spark joined forces with the police to investigate. Without disclosing personal information about their looks, the two college students, Fire and Dan, have been making various efforts to eradicate sexual crimes.
Becoming a Star: Diary of an Astronaut Student
By Samantha ChristopherEttie
Translated by Wei Yi / Xiang Fei
Shanghai Translation Publishing House
These stars sparkle so that you can find the one that belongs to you.
At the age of four, he saw the launch of columbia on television and dreamed about space for the first time. As a teenager, the female captain in Star Trek became her "goddess", entered the Italian Air Force, became a fighter pilot astronaut with extreme training and five years of long waiting... The first female astronaut in Italy, the first female commander of the International Space Station in Europe, a 200-day continuous space flight, with her own "Barbie" image, the first person to drink espresso in space... She is
Italy's first female astronaut, Samantha CristoFredi.
"Inseparable"
(In French) by Simone de Beauvoir
Translated by Cao Dongxue
Zhejiang Education Press
The author of The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir, never published a manuscript of a novel for the first time during his lifetime.
At the age of nine, Sylvie first met a girl her age, Andrea. She had never seen such a cool girl. Unlike the obedient "good student" Sylvie, Andrea is intelligent but rebellious and indifferent to everything. They became inseparable. This emotion is fierce and deep into the soul. Beginning with a defiance of the school order, the conformist Sylvie moves step by step to freedom; the unruly Andrea struggles step by step under the constraints of family and etiquette, and gradually becomes a trapped beast.
If you understand Beauvoir's upbringing, you will find that the André in the book is not fictional, but based on Beauvoir's inseparable friend when he was a child, Zaza. Some commentators believe that from the perspective of "Inseparable", the relationship that began to beauvoir on her youth was not with Sartre. Without Zaza, there might not have been a Second Sex. At least, Simone, and therefore did not sacrifice herself on the altar of tradition and family.
"Hate but Not Divorced Wives"
(Japanese) by Miki Kobayashi
Translated by Af
Chunchao CITIC Publishing Group
March 2022
Miki Kobayashi has been a freelance journalist since 2007. In 2013, he won the Poverty News Reporting Award. As a freelance journalist for 14 years, her reporting has focused on hiring, marriage, childbirth and childcare, and returning to the workforce.
Miki Kobayashi uses cross-decade tracking investigations, cases, and data to depict the real rift in marriage, and through the encounters of 15 interviewees, she continues to ask: what is a husband and wife/ what is marriage / what is home. The original appearance records the perspective of women, while supplementing the male point of view, while reflecting on the solidified concept, but also asking questions about the workplace culture and social environment, giving readers of all ages an opportunity to think deeply about marriage and personal, social and family.
Reporter: Yu Zihong
Edit: Yu Zihong