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ONCE IRON GIRLS: Essays on Gender by Post-Mao Chinese Literary Women. Edited by Hui Wu. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. xiii, 154 pp. US$55.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-7391-3421-4.
In recent years, a veritable boom in the translation into English of literature written by Chinese women has significantly enhanced the ability of anglophone readers to gain insight into Chinese culture and history. Once Iron Girls serves the important role of making available in English for the first time translations of essays on the nature of gender and womanhood by seven major literary figures: Bi Shumin, Fang Fang, Han Xiaohui, Hu Xin, Lu Xing'er, Shu Ting and Zhang Kangkang. Each of the writers was raised in Maoist China and subsequently wrote of her experiences in the post-Mao era. All of the essays have been previously published in China. Collectively, they tackle a perplexing question raised by Hu Xin: Why is it that the subject of "woman" and not "man" has captivated the minds of men and women since ancient times? This collection reveals ways in which these seven post-Mao literary women have wrestled with "redefining and repositioning women" (12). The volume is well organized, divided into seven sections by author, and includes a...