God is Not Great

This admirable endeavor to restore the importance of women's agency in twentieth-century Chinese literary history is characterized throughout by an intelligent probing of historiographic conventions, interpretative tendencies, fictional strategies, and party narrative logics. Composed at the intersection of a number of subfields -- modern Chinese literature, modern Chinese women's history, and contemporary feminist criticism -- and judiciously engaged with all of them, Amy Dooling's book offers a forceful statement on an important topic. -- Rey Chow, author of Woman and Chinese Modernity and editor of Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies in the Age of Theory This is a marvelous book. Amy Dooling tells a powerful story about Chinese women's search for their own voices, from the late Qing era to the eve of the Communist Revolution. In five chapters she presents the complex of cultural, political, affective, and rhetorical factors that gave rise to a gendered discourse, thereby explaining why Chinese women and their literary endeavor serve as a key to the making of Chinese modernity. W omen's Literary Feminism is a landmark in Chinese and Comparative gender and cultural studies. --David Der-wei Wang-Columbia University Like the Chinese women pioneers she studies, Amy Dooling has proven that the pen--when saturated with passionate ideas--can still change the world. Thank goodness that they are right. --Dorothy Ko, Barnard College