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Foxspirit: A Woman In Mao's China. Zhimei Zhang. Montreal, Quebec: Vehicule Press, 1992. 234 pp. $15.95.
This book provides an autobiographical account of one woman's life throughout a time of great social and political upheaval in China prior to, during, and after the cultural revolution. Its strengths lie in its descriptive accounts of the political struggles which ordinary citizens faced as a result of often - times repressive regimes. Another positive feature of the text is its ability to differentiate, with concrete examples, the myths and realities of the cultural revolution from the perspective of one who lived as both a supporter of the ideologies of the communist party and someone named as traitor to it because she did not always follow the party line. It is difficult to know whether or not Zhang's story is a unique one in terms of her anti - stereotypical behaviour for a woman in China then - or now, or whether other women's voices of similar experiences have yet to be heard from.
Among the weaknesses of the book are the inconsistencies between what is sometimes a historical record of event stretching over a fifty - year period, and in a variety of locations both within and outside of china, and at other times a personal memoir. The reader becomes frustrated as to what story is being told, about who, and why. Whatever the author's motives were in writing the book, she not successful in making them clear -to this reader anyway.
Not only is this text partly the autobiography of the author, Zhimei Zhang, but also of her mother, who in 1935 was a mahjong gambler and a member of the walthy Xia land - owning family in Jinxiang, "a walled town in the...