Maud Lewis
The "Good Books of Women's Literature of Micro-Fire Bearers" was initiated and sponsored by Professor Zhang Li of the College of Literature of Beijing Normal University and the "Women's Literature Studio of Micro-Fire Bearers". The list is divided into four lists of books in spring, summer, autumn and winter, which are released every three months, and Professor Zhang Li and the graduate student team read the works of female writers who appeared in the literary scene in the quarter, repeatedly discussed and wrote recommendations. Each quarterly list recommends about 20 good books in Chinese and good books in foreign translation. In January of the following year, the Women's Literature Studio will launch the Annual List of Good Books in Women's Literature.
"Women's Literature Good Book List" is committed to discovering and recommending domestic published women's literature good books for readers, it encourages and commends those female creators who are beautifully written, insightful, deeply imaginative, understanding, expressive and social feelings, pay attention to the women's literature, women's life and women's survival of our times, and hope to record the changes in the female spirit and femininity of our times.
In the past year, the Women's Literature Good Books List has launched the Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter Seasons List and the Annual List, "My Favorite Women's Literature Book List 2021". The following is the spring 2022 list, including 15 original Chinese books and 6 foreign translation books, and especially recommends 2 new books on women's literature recently published by Professor Zhang Li. Hope friends like it.
The Bearer of the Flames: 2022 Women's Literature Good Books List
Spring book list
○ Chinese original good book ○
01
Flowers on the Sea: The Daily Life of Women in Shanghai Workers' New Villages
By Ye Yeting, Zhang Yu, and Liu Xi
Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House
December 2021 edition
"And if they can't match the labels in these hot searches, they are difficult to be seen by the public." And the ordinary mothers, daughters, or wives in these grassroots communities we studied also need to be valued, seen, and read, and the 'ordinary' individuals need not be labeled, let alone stigmatized. ”
Recommend people
Tan Fu
PhD candidate of 2021 majoring in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature at Beijing Normal University
Testimonials
This book is a qualitative study of sociology by three humanities and social scientists from different professional backgrounds and their team, which took several years to complete. Taking "daily life" as the starting point, it records the daily life of women from poor families at the grass-roots level in Shanghai Workers' New Village, such as the cost of buying vegetables and changes in the distance, and then approaches their emotional world and analyzes the difficulties and responses they face. The first half of the book presents us with vivid and vivid materials such as the oral histories of women of six different ages and the diaries they wrote during the epidemic, while the second half focuses on the mother-daughter relationship in grass-roots families under the influence of the great changes in urbanization, and the double burden of the COVID-19 epidemic on poor women in terms of material and emotional labor.
Not only that, the researchers also creatively combined research methods such as journal writing, photo writing, and interactive mutual assistance with traditional research methods such as oral history and in-depth interviews to establish social relations and achieve empathy with them. The women of the workers' new village are no longer cold research subjects, but participants who pick up pens and cameras to record themselves, after all, "they are not unable to write, but they never thought that they had time to write, they could write." Their stories, their lives, should naturally be their own." Researchers also constantly reflect on themselves while observing in the field, breaking through the presupposition of concepts, empathy and understanding are not only in the interaction with women, but also in the interaction between team members, and truly reach the "study of affection".
02
"Spring and Autumn"
Lee shrugged
Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House
"A gentle and thick man, whose writing is bright and bright, and whose harmony is as gentle as spring; a man of wisdom and cunning, whose writing is dashing and handsome, and whose writing is as ethereal as autumn." They are spring and autumn in the Spring and Autumn Period. At this moment two thousand five hundred years ago, they finally met. ”
Feng Wenjuan
Beijing Normal University and Lu Xun College of Literature jointly hold a master's degree in literary creation
"The Great Spring and Autumn" is a collection of historical and cultural essays carefully created by the writer Li Fang, many of which are famous and new works. The author's broad vision and unique insight into Chinese civilization are impressive. The grasp of historical materials and the literary treatment are a major feature of this book. The author uses twenty-three poems to connect the Cultural Landscape of China, including the silhouettes of Chinese scholars such as Yang Xiong, Ji Kang, and Chen Ziang, as well as the rhythm of the veins of great powers such as cultural origins, urban development, and poverty alleviation, as well as the romance of the Chinese Way carried by the Jixia Xuegong, Kaihua Paper, and the Red Chamber.
Li Fang has a deep "archaeological consciousness" and no lack of romantic feelings, her gaze traces back to the Spring and Autumn, but she is based in the present; although she has done her best to write the depths of history, she has also made a charming blank treatment for the silence of the years.
03
"Hidden in the VastNess"
Ai Ping
Hundred Flowers Literary and Art Publishing House
"Friend, this is Hulunbuir. The snow was without a trace, and the week was cold, but every life never yielded, and all bravely lived and stubbornly continued. Natural selection, never give up. It is these powerful beings that constitute the endless spring. ”
The afterglow reflects the snow
Master's degree student in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature of Beijing Normal University in 2021
"Hidden in the Vast Time" is Ai Ping's latest collection of short essays, which begins with "Dedicated to My Hometown Hulunbuir", showing the overall style of the Hulunbuir Steppe from multiple perspectives such as nature, humanities, geography and history, and the language is quite poetic.
In Ai Ping's pen, Hulunbuir is the unity of heaven and man, and the forgetting of things and me is the silent realm of all things. Here, all living creatures prey, roost and reproduce here, and herders have passed on the philosophy of survival with the grasslands from generation to generation. Entering AiPing's text is like looking around with the writer in the clear wind of the grassland, lakes, grasslands, forests, skies, sheep, herders, eagles circling in Aton Ula, geese raised by Aunt Kudzu, mother bears stealing food in Daxing'anling, disappearing lynx...
There is a deep humanistic concern in the cracks of her language, not only deep thinking about the herdsmen's philosophy of survival, but also deeply worried about the ecological situation of the grassland under the impact of modern civilization, hoping to build her ideal home in the text: Hulunbuir, all things are safe.
04
"Yan Shangzhu in the Mirror"
Siren
Yilin Publishing House
November 2021 edition
"For many years, there has been a strange disposition lurking in me, whenever I am happy or greatly sad, I will make a sound, I will send out the sorrow of Chu opera, self-composed lyrics, holding my fingers, winking my eyes like silk, turning around gracefully, a person uses the sadness of Hubei Chudi to express my crazy madness."
Huo Anqi
Master's degree in Chinese Modern and Contemporary Literature, Beijing Normal University
Yan Shangzhu in the Mirror is the fifth collection of essays by Siren. In this book, the Siren is still the Same Siren. Rough and hard, she runs and shouts in her writing, speaking for the nameless. But at the same time, Siren is no longer just the same her as she used to be. Halfway through his life, Siren began to forgive and begin to reconcile. In the essay "Yan Shangzhu in the Mirror", Yan Shang and "I" are reconciled; in "Even if the snow falls on the cabin", "I" and my father are reconciled; in "Loving Your Suffering", "I" reconcile with my brother; "In the Approaching Fear", "I" reconcile with the aging of my own body... These reconciliations and reliefs add a bright undertone to this new work.
We have always been familiar with the Siren who coexists with the migrant workers in Guangdong. Today, we see more stories of Huang Hongyan who grew up in Huangcun. In essays such as "Slow Return", "Yellow Village, Yellow Village", and "Sorrow", the smell of earth replaces the steel atmosphere that has always been iconic in Siren's works. The change of smell opened up a new dimension to Siren's prose creation.
05
The Gate of Life
Ye Qianyun
Beijing October Literature and Art Publishing House
"Along the way in the autumn, they stood fruitfully in the trees, in the fields, on the hillsides. My mother's land is fragrant, walnuts are waiting for me, Chuanwu is waiting for me, persimmon flowers are waiting for me, and old ham cooked by my mother is waiting for me. ”
Zhou Yanqi
The Gate of Life is yunnan writer Ye Qianyun's latest collection of essays. The whole book is composed of six essays, "The Gate of Life", "The Wood of Life", "The Fire of Life", "The Soil of Life", "The Gold of Life", and "The Water of Life", which depicts the customs and customs of xuanwei in yunnan province and the changes of the times, and expresses the writer's thinking on the themes of birth, death, farming, land, and money.
Ye Qianyun has a strong regional consciousness, and her pen and ink contain a deep attachment to her hometown Siping Village. She is good at using the dialect of northeast Yunnan, interspersed with strange folk legends and warm folk songs and ballads, not avoiding the complicated record of the rise and death of the countryside, the cold and warm of human feelings, writing the simple and industrious life of the people in this land, showing a picture of Yunnan full of vitality.
In the writer's vernacular writing, the most moving thing is her praise of her mother and the land. Her writing shows a plain feminine perspective. She writes about the hardships of female fertility, the stubbornness and change of rural fertility concepts, and reflects on the fertility pain felt as a female community, but there is no lack of tenacious love for life, providing a gentle female experience outside the avant-garde perspective. Although some reflections do not constitute profound, they can make the reader feel the writer's love for people, land, and life, and make people empathize.
06
Full Immersion doomsday script
Zhai Yongming
A page folio | Liaoning People's Publishing House
January 2022 edition
"What am I? Ask the earth again
Rise from the ashes
Rise from the rubble
Rise from the scalpel
Rising from big data"
Cao translation
Full Immersion in the Doomsday Script is an anthology of Zhai Yongming's poems from 2015-2021, many of which are contemporary. For example, in the first series of "Full Immersion in the Doomsday Script", Zhai Yongming tried to write about science fiction themes. In Cyborg's apocalyptic imagination, the poet "pounces on the last mystery," using language to reproduce her feelings, reflections, and questions. Through the spaceship of science fiction, the poet's gaze encompasses the universe, touches the boundaries of imagination, and opens up poetic space beyond the human world. For another example, in "This Poem", "Ward", and "Claustrophobia", the poet describes the human world under the ravages of the epidemic. These three poems contain violent emotional fluctuations, but also show the poet's ability to grasp the extreme. In addition, Zhai Yongming still cares for women in his poems. The four essays "The Grey Curtain", "The Three Witches", "Ecstasy" and "Gazing at Frubel's "The Swan Princess"" focus on women and show the female spirit of the poet.
Taken as a whole, this collection of poems has its own world of imagery: the world is filled with "dust", "wreckage", "insects", "glass" and "dry bones", resulting in a concise, cold and sharp poetic style. This is the result of Zhai Yongming's conscious pursuit, as her poem puts it, she is pursuing poems that are "bone-free/cleansed of useless things", which are "as strong as a flag in the wind" and "make the listener agitated".
07
"WangjiangNan"
Wang Xu was on the line
Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House
"Tea makers, who have never seen a pair of hands kneading ah- whether a man or a woman, with one hand or both hands to hold the tea leaves in the palm of their hands, on the kneading pieces to push forward, so that the tea balls in the palm of the hand flipped, green juice sometimes squeezed out along the edge of the tight grip of both hands ..."
Wu Dan
"Wangjiangnan" is the latest novel by Mao Dun Literature Prize winner Wang Xufeng. Twenty-six years after a gap, Wang Xufeng once again raised his pen and wrote the legendary story of the third generation of tea people of the Hang family on the shore of Xizi Lake: the calm and peaceful big brother shouldered the heavy responsibility of inheriting the tea industry, conformed to the trend of the times, and successfully pushed hang's Longjing tea out of the country; the second brother who was invincible sometimes stood at the head of the tide, sometimes fell to the bottom, and finally returned to the family; the warm and resolute sister did not lose herself in those years of not asking her lover about the return date, but supported a corner of the tea house. There are also their descendants Hang Han, Hang Yi, Hang Fangyue, Hang Pan, Lin Forget Worry... Just like different varieties of tea, or light and elegant, or thick and rich, each son and daughter of the Hangzhou family has its own fragrance.
Wang Xufeng composed the clutch sorrow and joy of this tea-fragrant family with solid words and peaceful tones, and told the concern for his relatives and the nostalgia for his lover on the paper. At the same time, in "Wangjiangnan", she also projected the changes in the Jiangnan region from 1945 to 1964 through the changes in the life trajectory of the Hang family. From "Tea Man Trilogy" to "Wangjiangnan", Wang Xufeng has divened into the long river of history with steady pen power, looking for the continuous lifeblood of tea culture in the turbulent waves, and also allowing us to see the leisurely, calm and clean tea people.
08
"In the Ward Under the Rainstorm"
By Su Fang
"She wasn't obsessed with them, she was fascinated by their desire for her. The boys' desires are vain and critical, full of dangers, and change from day to day. And the old age's desire is envy, considerate and safe, so that she is comfortable: you squander it, it is still too late. ”
Zhao Haoyu
"In the Ward Under the Rainstorm" is Su Fang's third collection of short stories, which not only selects the "Song of The Four Seasons" created by the writer in his early years, but also writes the title "Thirteen Love Letters"; and also collects the short stories created by Su Fang during the epidemic, such as "How to Kill the Man Upstairs" and "The Stars Are Not Bright", trying to convey the new changes in the writer's creation. In the collection of novels, the epidemic appears as a background or emotion, Su Fang tells the love story of urban men and women she is good at, and countless old years and Wang Mai meet again to start a new story or enter reincarnation.
Obviously, Su Fang is a writer with heterogeneous colors, and no matter which paragraph of this book you read, the freshness and tension of its language are very surprising. Few people can handle the dialogue so concisely and precisely, between two quotation marks or before a period, the people's voices and hearts in the book are vividly displayed by the Soviet side in an almost cruel way.
In this collection of novels, Su Fang further enriches the diversity of love discourse, some people see the opposite sex as a projection of self-desire, some people look for proof of youth and existence in others; some people use reunion to achieve regrets, some people use missing conservative throbbing... The Soviet side is so persistent in talking about love and writing love, which may be a talent, but it also needs courage. The inevitable question is, how to recognize the value of this type of writing? If we are willing to see love as a way for us to know ourselves and keep ourselves in the times, then the "abnormal" emotional story of men and women in the Soviet side may have profound reflection and exploration significance.
09
The Color of Time
By Feng Qiuzi
Guangxi Normal University Press
"In the many days that have passed, people and events have been in their own irreversible orbits, resisting, merging, sacrificing, dissolving, and in those processes that have been, each person's life has shown differences, showing the meaning of being a person, showing the essence and content of events that events give to people and people give to events."
Zheng Zulong
2018 undergraduate student of the College of Literature of Beijing Normal University
"The Color of Time" is a collection of latest essays by writer Feng Qiuzi, including his prose works on personal growth memories, daily life, modern dance, painting, literary views and many other aspects, as well as dozens of illustrations of his own paintings. In the interweaving of painting and text, the impression of the author's hometown inner Mongolia not only stays in the expression of words, but also presents in visual and artistic forms; the expression of mobilizing every joint of the body when participating in modern dance, the experience narrative in inner immersion and body language, and the perception and perception of painting and literature also reflect the realm of an artist.
As a writer who is good at observing and experiencing the subtle moments of life, Feng Qiuzi's writing combines the intellectuality of thinking with the long and sincere emotions that originate from the bloodline. When writing about the land of her hometown of Inner Mongolia, she focused her attention on the connection between the modern daily life of the Inner Mongolian people and the ancient traditions - seeing the old man chanting the peaceful scriptures of all things in the face of the yellow sand, witnessing the emotional changes in the face of the death of her loved ones, she began to summon those beliefs and experiences from the ancestors of the nation, regarding death as a baptism of the soul, and transforming the sorrows and joys of life into the distant melody of the Mongolian long tune. In modern life, rethinking people's situation and choices, and re-establishing a connection between people and the land, Feng Qiuzi's view of prose has thus been established: "I understand that prose writing should start from respecting the most basic elements of the world, that is, respecting people's hearts and thinking, respecting the events that have occurred, standing in the most essential place of the 'event' in each life, facing it."
10
"Over the Vajim Beams"
Feng Liang
Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House
She walked eastward, first over a mountain beam, then a mountain beam, not high nor steep, only counting the two thin and thin folds of the undulating mountains here, going up and down, repeating twice. As the sky grew brighter, the slag and wild pears were red and golden, and they were still on their respective branches, and they became more and more dazzling, and they arrived at the village where the Panjia family was located. ”
Tian Liyuan
A 2021 master's degree student majoring in literature and art at Wuhan University
Liangshan is the hometown of the Yi writer Feng Liang, and it is also the hometown she built through literature. The new work "Turning Over Vajim Liangzi" is undoubtedly a continuation of Feng Liangyuanxiang's writing, and the "Vajim Liangzi" in the title of the book is entrenched in Liangshan. Different from the previous infinite closeness to Liangshan, Feng Liang deliberately left the countryside to write this time, presenting a new narrative pattern.
Feng Liang chose a subject matter that is extremely current. She led her Yi youth from her hometown to the urban wave of Beijing. They either live in a long distance or drift briefly, and deduce stories of ups and downs in a foreign land. The protagonist, Ah He, a young Yi who works and lives in Beijing, is often invited by the police station to assist in his work and do oral interpreters for his compatriots. Feng Liang conceals the heterogeneity of the Yi civilization in details such as language, belief, diet, and medical treatment, and through the spatial transformation from the countryside to the city, collides with practical problems such as educational differences, migrant dilemmas, ecological changes, and language barriers, and under the torn identity, cultural pain and spiritual transmutation alternate.
When Ah He's hidden past surfaces, the Yi woman Shi Ni becomes the soul of the entire novel, she is pure and tenacious, neat and open. With his original simplicity and roughness, Shi Ni opened one numb heart after another, calling people to connect and approach, like a living fire of the Yi people, thrown into the high wall barrier, reflecting a wide and clear path. Obviously, Shi Ni carries Feng Liang's writing intentions, she wants to uproot the impression of Liangshan such as backwardness and poverty, replace it with a new Liangshan weather, and explore the way out of the dilemma of urbanization. The novel thus acquires the breadth of space and the thickness of history.
11
Zebra
Fu Zhen
People's Literature Publishing House
"Breastfeeding, menstruation, childbirth... What hundreds of millions of people around the world are experiencing, why should we desperately avoid it and feel ashamed? ...... In fact, what is there to be ashamed of? Sick people need to see a doctor, nursing mothers need to have a nursing room, and people with fertility difficulties need to go for IVF. ”
Ainuel Tumarbek
Beijing Normal University and Lu Xun College of Literature jointly held a master's class in literary creation, edited by Minzu Publishing House
Zebra is Fu Zhen's first novel, based in part on her real-life experiences. She opened with the story of Suang, a woman who has experienced three congenital recurrent miscarriages, who travels to Thailand to seek reproductive assistive technology, telling a story about women, marriage, fertility and redemption.
The female group portraits she portrays are impressive: Chen Qian, who is constantly trekking on the road of fertility, Si Si, who can only acquiesce to her husband's cheating because she has no children, and Yu Jie, who came to do a test tube for the third time and cut her wrist after failure. They reveal the truly brutal side of the battle for fertility.
Fertility is the issue that the novel focuses on. Fu Zhen's story is telling us that any woman can face the dilemma of childbearing, but at the same time, the topic of female physiology cannot be discussed in a bright and bright way. Fu Zhen said that she wrote the 380,000-word novel to refute those who take things for granted and define women as they please, hoping that fertility, the body and more topics about women can be discussed extensively and deeply, and hoping that people will no longer be secretive about IVF and infertility.
By reading this novel, we will receive Fu Zhen's keen awareness of her own time and the brave message from the novelist, as well as the view of the world she expresses through the novel, which makes the novel somewhat overflowing, but at the same time more profound.
12
"Gesang Flower Posture Posture"
By Liu Qiong
"From ancient times to the present, plants have long penetrated into each other's roots, where the original genes can be divided. Whether it's called Gesang flower, or cosmos, or cosmos, it doesn't seem important now. Importantly, this beautiful and highly vital flower will make its home on the plateau and can walk from the east coast to the west coast. ”
Yang Yi
2019 doctoral candidate of Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature at Beijing Normal University
Shortly after the launch of "Outside the Words of flowers", Liu Qiong published her collection of essays, "Gesang Flower Posture Posture Posture". Compared with the former, the content of the book is relatively complex and flexible, including the writer's text spanning twenty years, including beautiful texts written during his travels to the north and south of the river, essays focusing on history and culture, and critical articles written for literary scenes.
Even inconspicuous flowers and plants can be filled with the agility to connect the heavens and the earth in Liu Qiong's pen. The flowers are varied, born in the northwest plateau of the Kelsang flower, its impact stems from the rough environment of chuchu pitiful, Liu Qiong gave birth to the beauty and civilization, national culture thinking. Everywhere you go and what you see, you can always trigger different thoughts, and bloom the beauty and innocence of all things in the world in the artistic conception created by the writer.
Those thoughtful essays show the writer's unique insight in the traceability of Chinese history and culture. The articles in the book do not stick to genre divisions. Liu Qiong integrates her own thoughts and feelings into her writing, and sees the ups and downs of the world.
13
The White Elephant in the Sea
Ling Lan
The fierce sea breeze stirred her dress over her swimsuit, revealing a pair of stout white legs below, and the waves slowly swept across the beach with a dance-like rhythm, and the fine waves gathered and scattered under her feet. Mom turned back into a young white elephant, standing in the shallow blue water, waiting, waiting, waiting for our relatives on the Two American Continents to come home. ”
Wan Jing
Class of 2020 undergraduate students, College of Letters, Beijing Normal University
"White Elephant in the Sea" is the latest collection of short stories by Chinese-American writer Ling Lan. The title "white elephant" in English refers to large and inappropriate things, and Ling Lan uses this as a metaphor for the "immigrant" group, "Emigrating to another place is most likely a luxury that consumes money, in vain." "Most of the nine stories are based on what Ling Lan really saw and heard, the tide of life, the whirlpool of youth, the cooling passion, the inexplicable jet lag... The tides come and go, Ping Scatter Ping gathers, Ling Lan starts from a small place to write the daily life of Chinese people in the United States, always permeated with sentimental emotions.
If America is a vast sea of strangers, then immigration means handing over one's fate to the wind and waves of the sea. Perspective on human nature and life from individual experience is Ling Lan's favorite writing perspective. For example, in the last article of the book, "The Quarter Mile", the street woman who jumped off a building, her short and disgraceful life was implicated in many details: the underground industry of the city, the encounter of the prostitutes, the police who violently enforced the law, and so on. In this story, "I" decided to immigrate to the United States, but the street woman who was also Chinese and had only one side of the relationship died on the road that "I" had to go through every day. One choice, two destinies, one light and one dark, a long way away, "a dream in vain" is finally awake in the heavy reality. Ling Lan's words are calm and affectionate, and they are all about sharpness. She does not deliberately create a sense of exoticity and strangeness, but writes the life of immigrants who are struggling like a dream. Fishing for the moon in the sea, the moment it fell into it, it was not cold in the end.
14
"The Fool Unigo Is Gone"
Du Lan by
"On the way, I met my burned tenant—he was probably blown by the wind. Unigo lay on his back beside the bales of fragrant branches, facing the sun, and every inch of his skin was full of life. Unigo's palm was covered with small grass, and there were grass crawlers lurking inside. In every joint cavity of his, ants were building new palaces. Birds lay eggs on his forehead, goats eat grass in his shadow. He was still breathing, his chest rising and falling slightly, like a cradle that made the little animals on his chest drowsy. ”
Wang Luke
The Fool Unigo Disappears is the first collection of novels by the 1999-born Mongolian novelist Wataru. In this collection of novels, Mongolian culture and steppe landscapes are transformed into other landscapes in the pen of a new generation of writers: it is not only mysterious, angry, and poetic, but also magical, broken modern and postmodern styles. Whether it is the characters in the story or the environment in which the story takes place, there is a stitching color of retro totem culture and vaporwave aesthetics.
In her storytelling, Watanabe provides a reflection on the relationship between man and nature: the process of human growth, the way of thinking and nature should be no distance. Her novels are complemented by a number of pieced-together fictional fantasies that live in nature, and humanity appears ignorant, vulnerable, but rampaged. In novels such as "Circles and Triangles", "A Beautiful Day", and "The Feathers of Sister Sandan", Dulan concentrates on the life thinking of "powerlessness" and "going with the flow": the reason why life exists is because it has many shapes, but life becomes difficult and clear at the same time as it obtains meaning. In Dolan's writings, those children and imaginary objects seem to accept the world more easily and naturally than the mature, rational "people" in our habitual thinking. The language of Dulan is full of clear and vigorous poetry in chaos and decay, and has a fairy tale atmosphere. But at the same time, Du Lan's novel writing has the defect of storyline patterning and character flattening, and in addition to poetic imagination and thinking, the landing processing of the novel plot lacks concrete texture.
15
Classical Spring Water: Twelve Lectures on the Poetry of Pan Xiangli
Pan Xiangli
March 2022 edition
"The abundance and change of spring and the warm noise of summer have passed, the blood of the whole era has been cold, and the world and the state of mind have shown a kind of debauchery and calmness. The cold also brings cold rationality, reminds the order of the universe, and suddenly realizes that life is only at this unsatisfactory time, so that every yellow leaf is seen, and every remnant of the flower is cherished. ”
Zhang Xinyue
Class of 2021 undergraduate student, College of Literature, Beijing Normal University
"Classical Spring Water" is the latest collection of essays by writer Pan Xiangli on ancient poetry. Pan Xiangli cuts through the perspective of a modern woman and writes about the unique experience of intercourse with Tao Yuanming, Du Fu, Li Shangyin, Xiao Xiaoyan, Ouyang Xiu, Su Shi, Zhou Bangyan, Lu You, Xin Zhiyi and other literati, showing a profound learning in the cheerful conversation. The classical masterpieces on the paper sway in the interpretation of poetry, swaying into a spring water.
Pan Xiangli has a keen sense of perception. For example, to explain "qingmei", in just a few sentences in her pen, she depicts subtle feelings that can only be understood and ineffable. When Pan Xiangli re-examines Su Shi's encounter with Rou Nu, Lu You's heart knot, Yan Jidao's obsession, and Xin Jiaxuan's deep affection, the beauty of the temperament of those women who are "so free, so open, so flexible, so transcendent on earth" jumps out of the paper. From the Eryan dialogue to the temperament of the Tang and Song Dynasties, she meticulously ponders the personal and contemporary psychology, integrates daily associations into the specific imagination of historical plots, tries to give classical poetry a vivid human breath, and carefully appreciates the true taste of fate that has lasted for a long time.
○ Good books for foreign translations ○
Girls' Underground Warfare: Uncovering Hidden Attacks in Interpersonal Interactions
By Rachel Simmons
Translated by Xu Yang
Ideal Republic | Hainan Publishing House
"Making friends is a choice, not a mandatory command. Friendship is a selective partnership, and both love and conflict are normal. ”
Cheng Shuying
Rachel Simmons' Underground Wars for Girls is a monograph that focuses on girls' social problems. The author interviewed many girls aged 10-14 who had experienced implicit interpersonal attacks on campus, and used the strategies, insights and wisdom accumulated over the past decade to teach and get along with the girls. By interviewing school supervisors, providing guidance to parents, and communicating with school counselors, this book analyzes the forms and causes of implicit attacks in interpersonal communication, and gives practical advice.
Unlike boys, who express their anger, girls' aggressive behavior is covert and relationship-oriented. In the same desire for "connection, recognition and power" as boys, girls are often encouraged to be "friendly" and not to be angry and confronted because of the contradictory shaping of social culture and education, which leads to non-verbal statements, alliances, gossip behind their backs, spreading rumors, being friendly in private but being mean to friends in public.
The authors argue that the culture of implicit aggression against girls needs to be acknowledged and paid attention to, and relationships defined in new ways. Girls should no longer dwell on idealized friendships and feel that conflict is a symbol of a broken relationship, but rather see it as an adjunct to the relationship, essentially a social skill worth honing. In fact, the knowledge and experience imparted in this book is not only applicable to girls in difficult situations, providing methods for parents, schools, and society, but also for women who grow up, and even some men facing the same problems, to help them survive the difficulties of life facing hidden attacks.
"Inseparable"
By Simone de Beauvoir
Translated by Cao Dongxue
Zhejiang Education Press
Madame Caral looked at them with a smile, not asking. For the first time, I realized that there was a trap behind this smile. I used to envy the independence that Andrea enjoyed, and suddenly I felt like she wasn't as free as I was. Behind her there is this history, around her there is this big mansion, there is such a big family: a prison, the way out is carefully guarded. ”
Sun Umaki
Master's degree candidate of 2021 majoring in Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature of Beijing Normal University
Inseparable is a manuscript of a novel by Simone de Beauvoir that never appeared during her lifetime. In the novel, based on zaza, a close friend of the girlhood, Beauvoir portrays for the first time a period of growing up that has a profound impact on him.
It's a story about friendship and it's also about women's self-actualization. The two girls meet at the age of nine, and the different lives are intertwined and reflected in each other: in the intelligent and rebellious girl Andrey, the obedient and good student Sylvie sees the possibility of becoming himself. Under the influence of André, the conformist Sylvie gradually broke away from the discipline of school and faith and went to freedom; however, André's pursuit of freedom retreated step by step under the shackles of family and faith, and finally could not escape the fate of death.
Through the perspective of the narrator "I", Beauvoir writes this lifelong story with a calm tone. The actions of the two women are not simply submission or resistance, as the translator said in the afterword, "if you give in, you are yielding in the struggle; if you resist, you are resisting in hesitation", "Inseparable" presents two souls struggling in contradiction, and also reveals the complexity hidden behind the differences in the fates of the two women. In the overlap of two lives, we can see growth, we can see the last resort, we can see the prudent self-examination, we can see the desire to love and the hopelessness of love, and we can see the determination to pursue freedom.
It's both a mystery and a key. For this past experience, is it a memory, a memorial, or a resettlement? "Women are not born, but acquired", how did the famous thesis of Beauvoir come about? The story in the novel may provide a way to understand Beauvoir's life.
52 Blue
By Leslie Jamison
Translated by Gao Yu Bing
"If we tell stories to ourselves in order to survive, what do we get from the stories that make us live again?" It doesn't just alleviate the terrible endgame of death, it makes us realize that we are influenced by invisible or incomprehensible forces. ”
Ma Siyu
2020 doctoral candidate in modern and contemporary Chinese literature at Beijing Normal University
Leslie Jamieson is an American post-80s novelist and non-fiction writer who teaches in the Columbia University School of the Arts' Advanced Nonfiction Writing Class. 52 Blue, a nonfiction novel by Leslie Jamison after Eleven Heartbreaks and Currents of Whiskey and Ink, was shortlisted for the PEN American Literary Awards for Prose Art in 2019.
"52 Blue" begins with the world's only whale that hovers in 52 hertz and its social impact, eliciting fourteen stories about "pursuit", "longing" and "thought". With "loneliness" as the background, the work explores the truth of children's past life memories, women's reliance on the online game "Second Life" to reconstruct individual lives, slum family life tracking and other social topics, and at the same time, based on personal personal experience, examines the wedding, "stepmother" identity, the commonality of lovelorn emotions, fertility experience and other life experiences that are particularly secret for women, depicts women's multiple roles, multiple emotions and complex psychology in human society and family life, and tells the universality of "loneliness".
With the help of psychology, history, and sociology, writers carry out investigative writing, try to dive into the depths of human nature along the two paths of social topics and individual experience, observe the subtle and universal mental pain of human beings, and present the loneliness of people's hearts from different levels. The loneliness that is difficult to declare becomes a feeling that can be said through the intervention of "people". What the writer strives to clarify in "52 Blues" is that the "loneliness" that exists metaphorically among human beings is not actually lonely in itself, thus conveying a voice that comforts the human heart.
The Mars Club
By Rachel Kushner
Translated by Wang Simin
"They crushed her spirit and became her moral lord again. She looked beautiful, like plastic flowers in a funeral home. ”
Zhang Tianyu
"Mars Club" is a novel by American novelist Rachel Kushner, which was named The New York Times Book of the Year and topped Time Magazine's Novel of the Year list. The novel starts from the perspective of the protagonist Romy Hall, with a group of female prisoners in Stanville Women's Prison as the protagonist, leading the reader to observe the women's prison, another world hidden behind the light.
The systematic humanistic perspective makes this novel not only show a distinct sense of femininity, but also portray the darkness of the American judicial system in all aspects. As the story unfolds, the author's gaze gradually transcends gender itself and expands to characters such as police officers, prison instructors, and victims, satirizing the absurdity of so-called fairness and justice in american justice. The female friendship in prison, the helping hand of Mr. Instructor and the mother-child time in Hall's memory together light up this dark place, inject temperature into Hall's prison life, and become a touching spark in "Mars Club".
The Choice to Be a Mother
Written by Ona Donat
Translated by Lin Yourou
Lucida Mingmu and Beijing United Publishing Company
February 2022 edition
"We have to pave roads like this. We women need to take the world into our hands and not go with the flow. We women need to dominate our bodies and lives, as well as our thoughts, feelings and imaginations. ”
Ma Yi
The Choice to Be a Mother is the first internationally influential work by Israeli sociologist Orna Donat. Born in 1976, Ona Donat teaches at a prestigious Israeli university, where her main area of research is the social expectations faced by women.
The author adopts the question "If you could go back to the past with the knowledge and experience you have now, would you still make yourself a mother?" "Such a question as a starting point, using fieldwork, lasted for five years, interviewed twenty-three mothers, spanning three generations, who held complex emotions about childbearing, listened to their true voices, and showed the emotional journey of women before and after childbirth. As a female researcher, the author does not adopt the usual bystander perspective, but bravely intervenes in itself, trying to sketch a complex roadmap for these thick emotions in the shadows by listening to the women's sentences, tears, raised tones, cynical tones, laughter, pauses, and silence, so that mothers from different social groups can find their own place in these routes.
This book takes the hidden changes in the emotional world after women become mothers as the starting point, and in such an angle that has never been systematically studied before, it makes a valuable reflection on the daily female self-improvement and women's and social relations, which has a strong realism and presentness.
Fashion and Its Social Issues: Class, Gender and Identity in Clothing
Beauty by Diana Crane
Translated by Xiong Yiran
"Fashion has always been a social issue for women, and dress is always socially motivated. Fashion issues in the 19th century tended to be conservative, based on a widely shared concept of the role of women. In the 1920s and 1960s, the fashion agenda was more radical, reshaping women's appearance to accommodate changes in social roles and other aspects of society. ”
Yi Yanni
As a well-documented sociological monograph, Fashion and Its Social Issues, written by American cultural sociologist Diana Crane, is a fair account of the clothing revolution in Britain, France and the United States from the 19th to the 20th century, focusing on the relationship between fashion and class/gender subject identity and socio-cultural structure.
Behind the change of fashion, there is a hidden historical process of women's clothing from the tip of the iceberg to the gradual surface. Diving from the edge of the theory's neglect, Crane examined the fragments scattered in the darkness. If the upper-class women of the 19th century were given a "second sex" gender role by expensive, tight clothing in limited social activities, the real clothing styles of working-class housewives who had no chance to participate in social life outside the family could only be imagined, outlined and shaped by the relevant data of the sewing machines at that time. With the widespread use of bicycles and the outbreak of war, more women have gradually participated in the structural changes brought about by the broad social division of labor, providing a widely accepted possibility for women's clothing (such as pants and sportswear) in hidden and critical public spaces that violate the dress codes of the times.
Crane believes that with the transformation of social productivity, fashion has undergone a transformation from "class fashion" to "consumer fashion". This process is also accompanied by subtle changes in the "referent" of fashion, that is, from the style of clothing to the expression of social and cultural values attached to clothing. Through layers of discussion, one of the clues she tried to sort out was clarified: behind the trend of women's clothing towards multiple styles, it actually reflected the long historical process of women gradually entering the broad social division of labor in the form of subjects.
○Especially recommended ○
Selected Chinese Women's Literature in 2021
Zhang Li Editor-in-Chief
Tianjin People's Publishing House
This book is a continuation of the "2019 Selected Chinese Women's Literature" and "2020 Selected Chinese Women's Literature", and is a selection of women's short stories edited by Zhang Li, a professor at Beijing Normal University. This book continues to be based on love, secrets, and distant places, collecting the works of twenty Chinese female writers of different generations in 2021, looking for and marking the signposts of contemporary women's literature.
These gazes and writings from women eventually converge into the voices and literature of women unique to this era, from which we can see the spiritual outlook and literary temperament changes of contemporary women's literature, which can be called the annual record of the survival of Chinese women.
Mirror: Women's Literature Reading Lesson
Zhang Li
Flower City Press
Starting from the three dimensions of "self, dilemma, and relationship" that are closely related to women, this book selects more than 20 typical literary images from the works of Many famous artists such as Lu Xun, Ding Ling, Xiao Hong, Zhang Ailing, Zhang Jie, Feng Jicai, Tie Ning, Wang Anyi, Su Tong, Bi Feiyu, Chi Zijian, and Dongxi, reflecting the survival of women in today's social reality.
What does it take to truly respect women? Who defines feminine beauty? What is a woman's decency? How to understand female camaraderie and mutual jealousy? Can money really measure love? Is divorce an abandonment? Will the mother also be kidnapped by the child's expectations? ...... Using literature as a mirror, you can cross gender, connect history, explain the present, and the confusion of women today can be found in this book.