Accessible without sacrificing depth. At first, I thought I was reading simply out of curiosity and intellectual interest. But when the book discussed Chen Yinke’s remarkable contributions to tracing the origins of Tang law while paying relatively little attention to women’s legal status, I felt a sudden sense of both alarm and gratitude.
It was a reminder that the parts of history most deliberately erased can only be recovered if we bring an equally deliberate awareness to our reading. Only then do the silences become visible.
This is true not only of gender, but of decolonial thought, the critique of anthropocentrism, and so many other ways of questioning what history has taught us to overlook.