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The Power of Weakness: Four Stories of the Chinese Revolution (Two By Two) by Ling, Ding, Hsun, Lu (2007) Paperback
This unique four-story collection juxtaposes the Chinese writing master Lu Hsun's pre-revolutionary fiction about rural women's personal sacrifices to custom and social expectations with Ding Ling's revolutionary inspirational literature of women's survival despite wartime atrocities. The result is a fascinating collection about the force of tradition and the historical moments that empower women to renegotiate their position in society.
Named the "commander of China's cultural revolution" by Mao Zedong, Lu Hsun (1881–1936) is one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.
Ding Ling (1904–1985) was one of modern China's most famous writers and cultural revolutionaries.
Named the "commander of China's cultural revolution" by Mao Zedong, Lu Hsun (1881–1936) is one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century.
Ding Ling (1904–1985) was one of modern China's most famous writers and cultural revolutionaries.
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First published June 1, 2007
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About the author
Ding Ling
59 books30 followersDing Ling (Chinese: 丁玲; pinyin: Dīng Líng), formerly romanized as Ting Ling, was the pen name of Jiang Bingzhi (simplified Chinese: 蒋冰之; traditional Chinese: 蔣冰之; pinyin: Jiǎng Bīngzhī), also known as Bin Zhi (彬芷 Bīn Zhǐ), one of the most celebrated 20th-century Chinese authors. She was awarded the Soviet Union's Stalin second prize for Literature in 1951.
Active in the Communist revolutionary cause, she was placed under house arrest in Shanghai by the Guomindang for a three-year period from 1933 to 1936. She escaped, and made her way to the Communist base of Yan'an. There she became one of the most influential figures in Yan'an cultural circles, serving as director of the Chinese Literature and Arts Association and editing a newspaper literary supplement.
Ding Ling struggled with the idea that revolutionary needs, defined by the party, should come before art. She objected to the gender standards at work in Yan'an. In 1942 she wrote an article in a party newspaper questioning the party's commitment to change popular attitudes towards women. She satirized male double standards concerning women, saying they were ridiculed if they focused on household duties, but also became the target of gossip and rumors if they remained unmarried and worked in the public sphere. She also criticized male cadres use of divorce provisions to rid themselves of unwanted wives. Her article was condemned by Mao Zedong and the party leadership, and she was forced to retract her views and undergo a public self-confession.
Her main work in these years was the novel The Sun Shines Over Sanggan River, which she completed in 1948. It followed the complex results of land reform on a rural village. It was awarded the Stalin prize for Literature in 1951, and is considered one of the best examples of socialist-realist fiction. It did not, however, address gender issues.
Always a political activist, in 1957 she was denounced as a "rightist", purged from the party, and her fiction and essays were banned. She spent five years in jail during the Cultural Revolution and was sentenced to do manual labor on a farm for twelve years before being "rehabilitated" in 1978.
A few years before her death, she was allowed to travel to the United States where she was a guest at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program. She died in Beijing in 1986.
She authored more than three hundred works. After her "rehabilitation" many of her previously banned books such as her novel The Sun Shines Over The Sanggan River were republished and translated into numerous languages. Some of her short works, spanning a fifty-year period, are collected in I Myself Am A Woman: Selected Writings Of Ding Ling.
(from Wikipedia)
Active in the Communist revolutionary cause, she was placed under house arrest in Shanghai by the Guomindang for a three-year period from 1933 to 1936. She escaped, and made her way to the Communist base of Yan'an. There she became one of the most influential figures in Yan'an cultural circles, serving as director of the Chinese Literature and Arts Association and editing a newspaper literary supplement.
Ding Ling struggled with the idea that revolutionary needs, defined by the party, should come before art. She objected to the gender standards at work in Yan'an. In 1942 she wrote an article in a party newspaper questioning the party's commitment to change popular attitudes towards women. She satirized male double standards concerning women, saying they were ridiculed if they focused on household duties, but also became the target of gossip and rumors if they remained unmarried and worked in the public sphere. She also criticized male cadres use of divorce provisions to rid themselves of unwanted wives. Her article was condemned by Mao Zedong and the party leadership, and she was forced to retract her views and undergo a public self-confession.
Her main work in these years was the novel The Sun Shines Over Sanggan River, which she completed in 1948. It followed the complex results of land reform on a rural village. It was awarded the Stalin prize for Literature in 1951, and is considered one of the best examples of socialist-realist fiction. It did not, however, address gender issues.
Always a political activist, in 1957 she was denounced as a "rightist", purged from the party, and her fiction and essays were banned. She spent five years in jail during the Cultural Revolution and was sentenced to do manual labor on a farm for twelve years before being "rehabilitated" in 1978.
A few years before her death, she was allowed to travel to the United States where she was a guest at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program. She died in Beijing in 1986.
She authored more than three hundred works. After her "rehabilitation" many of her previously banned books such as her novel The Sun Shines Over The Sanggan River were republished and translated into numerous languages. Some of her short works, spanning a fifty-year period, are collected in I Myself Am A Woman: Selected Writings Of Ding Ling.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 19, 2018
How do you write about a revolution?
How is it possible to fold an immediate moment of injustice into an appropriate literary form?
My first foray into a release from The Feminist Press. About a month ago I spent hours researching books to read: I pored over 2,000+ books and culled it down to a list of about 200. This book came out toward the top, and not for a single moment did it dash my high expectations.
This book is an entry into The Feminist Press' "2x2" series. A series in which they juxtapose literature tackling a shared theme, usually by women and men, and then ask the question, “Do women and men tackle these enduring themes differently?"
Ding Ling, considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, wrote some of the best known examples of socialist-realist fiction. She authored over 300 works and is one of the boldest and most brilliant women in literature.
&
Lu Hsun (Xun), a leading figure of modern Chinese literature and the acknowledged founder of Chinese vernacular writing, his writing reflects the larger conflict in modern Chinese thought between egalitarian and authoritarian impulses. He was an energetic opponent of despotism, a humanist for whom empathy, not ideological zeal, was the key to achieving revolutionary ends.
The introduction alone makes this book worthwhile. I learned so much! Written by Dr. Tani E. Barlow, a scholar of feminism, postcoloniality, and history in Asia (specifically China). She writes with such flowing narrative describing the lives and times of our two revolutionary writers. This entry in the 2x2 series seeks to address the question, How do you write about a revolution? Tani Barlow speaks at length to this issue.
From Dr. Barlow:
Lu Hsun and Ding Ling wrote the revolution in the moment, as it unfolded. For that reason, and since the revolutionary writer is politically engaged, their fiction places a premium on change, on renovation. Consequently their fiction seems insatiable. It never stops asking "When?" For instance, buried in the bleakest of accounts told by a priggish, young, alienated protagonist of a Lu Hsun story or the subjectivist laments of any of Ding Ling's modern "girls," there is always aching disquiet and the implicit question, When will the current ugly present yield to a better future?
This is a progressive form of fiction. So in it nothing is ever resolved definitively. Written ferociously in the moment, the stories and essays are propulsive and abrasive; literary works in motion, they cannot serve as still mirrors on a settled past.
Considering my newfound high regard for the introductory writer, I looked up the published works by Tani E. Barlow. Two, in particular, look very promising:
Gender Politics in Modern China: Writing and Feminism
The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism
Also credited as editor and introductory writer and something I just discovered and ordered:
I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling
How is it possible to fold an immediate moment of injustice into an appropriate literary form?
My first foray into a release from The Feminist Press. About a month ago I spent hours researching books to read: I pored over 2,000+ books and culled it down to a list of about 200. This book came out toward the top, and not for a single moment did it dash my high expectations.
This book is an entry into The Feminist Press' "2x2" series. A series in which they juxtapose literature tackling a shared theme, usually by women and men, and then ask the question, “Do women and men tackle these enduring themes differently?"
Ding Ling, considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, wrote some of the best known examples of socialist-realist fiction. She authored over 300 works and is one of the boldest and most brilliant women in literature.
&
Lu Hsun (Xun), a leading figure of modern Chinese literature and the acknowledged founder of Chinese vernacular writing, his writing reflects the larger conflict in modern Chinese thought between egalitarian and authoritarian impulses. He was an energetic opponent of despotism, a humanist for whom empathy, not ideological zeal, was the key to achieving revolutionary ends.
The introduction alone makes this book worthwhile. I learned so much! Written by Dr. Tani E. Barlow, a scholar of feminism, postcoloniality, and history in Asia (specifically China). She writes with such flowing narrative describing the lives and times of our two revolutionary writers. This entry in the 2x2 series seeks to address the question, How do you write about a revolution? Tani Barlow speaks at length to this issue.
From Dr. Barlow:
Lu Hsun and Ding Ling wrote the revolution in the moment, as it unfolded. For that reason, and since the revolutionary writer is politically engaged, their fiction places a premium on change, on renovation. Consequently their fiction seems insatiable. It never stops asking "When?" For instance, buried in the bleakest of accounts told by a priggish, young, alienated protagonist of a Lu Hsun story or the subjectivist laments of any of Ding Ling's modern "girls," there is always aching disquiet and the implicit question, When will the current ugly present yield to a better future?
This is a progressive form of fiction. So in it nothing is ever resolved definitively. Written ferociously in the moment, the stories and essays are propulsive and abrasive; literary works in motion, they cannot serve as still mirrors on a settled past.
Considering my newfound high regard for the introductory writer, I looked up the published works by Tani E. Barlow. Two, in particular, look very promising:
Gender Politics in Modern China: Writing and Feminism
The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism
Also credited as editor and introductory writer and something I just discovered and ordered:
I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling
June 9, 2010
Interesting, this project by the Feminist Press of bringing two writers together. Lu Hsun is the revered prophet of pre-Revolutionary China. He criticized the old regime without living to see the new one, which spared him much of the humiliation that Ding Ling, among other writers lived through, despite having begun her career in the area controlled by Mao's Red Army before its triumph. This volume pairs two stories and an essay from both writers. The comparison is a little unfair (despite being compiled by an academic expert on Ding Ling); for one thing, the essay was a specialty of Lu Hsun's. But both in the essay and the stories, Lu Hsun comes across as the more subtle, realistic, stylistically and psychological adept of the two. This is noticeable from the beginning, in which stories of the abuse of Chinese women by the Japanese are contrasted: Lu Hsun is a more nuanced treatment, but Ding Ling's treatment promotes healing through Red Communist solidarity. But in the second pairing, Lu Hsun's modernist account of a writer who fails the woman who lives with him has less impact and feeling than her more raw tale of a woman whose loss and checkered heroism exiles her from the community she sacrificed herself for.
March 17, 2019
Four stories, two by Lu Xun, two by Dingling, translated w/introduction by Tani E. Barlow.
September 14, 2020
Wow! Utterly fascinating exploration of the growth of feminism during the Chinese Revolution. This is the real deal by two Chinese intellectuals who lived during this brutal period.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews