Bøger af Yenna Wu

This anthology offers translations of seven stories and one novella from the 17th and 18th centuries, with a critical introduction and bibliography. To date there are no translations from the premodern period which focus exclusively on women, let alone the image of the shrew. These stories are among the most representative and memorable of those featuring the prototypical Chinese shrew, a prominent figure in premodern Chinese fiction and drama. Unique in being thematically organized, The Lioness Roars provides manageable (and fun) literary source readings for courses on Chinese women, Chinese history or Chinese literature.

Li Ang (1952) is a famous and prolific feminist writer from Taiwan who challenges and subverts sociocultural traditions through her daring explorations of sex, violence, women's bodies and desire, and national politics. As a taboo-breaking writer and social critic, she uses fiction to expose injustice and represent human nature. Her political engagement further affords her a visionary perspective for interrogating the problematic intersection of gender and politics. The ambivalence in her fictional representations invites controversies and debates. Her works have thus helped raise awareness of the problems, open up discussions, and bring about social and intellectual changes. Some of her works have been translated into such foreign languages as English, French, German, and Japanese. In her career spanning over forty years, she has won numerous literary awards.Li Ang's Visionary Challenges to Gender, Sex, and Politics is the first collection of critical essays in English on Li Ang and some of her most celebrated works. Contributing historians examine her vital roles in the Taiwanese women's movement and political arenas, as well as the social influence of her publications on extramarital affairs. Contributing literary scholars investigate the feminist controversy over her 1983 award-winning novel, Shafu (Killing the Husband; translated as The Butcher's Wife); offer alternative interpretative strategies such as looking into figurations of ';biopower' and relationship dynamics; dissect the subtle political significance in her magnificent novel Miyuan (The labyrinthine garden; 1991) and explosive political fiction, Beigang xianglu renren cha (Everyone sticks incense into the Beigang censer; 1997) from the perspective of gender and national identity; scrutinize the multiple discursive levels in her superb novel Qishi yinyuan zhi Taiwan/Zhongguo qingren (Seven prelives of affective affinity: Taiwan/China lovers; 2009); and analyze the ';(dis)embodied subversion' accomplished by her fantastic Kandejian de gui (Visible ghosts; 2004). As the first volume in English to examine Li Ang's trail-blazing discourse on gender, sex, and politics, this work will inspire more studies of her oeuvre and contribute usefully to the fields of modern Taiwanese and Chinese literature, feminist studies, and comparative literature.

China is the only major world power to have entered the twenty-first century with a thriving prison camp network-a frightening, mostly hidden realm known since 1951 as the laogai system. This book, the most comprehensive study of China's prison camps to date, draws from a wide range of primary sources, including many compelling literary documents, to illuminate life inside China's prison camps. Focusing mainly on the second half of the twentieth century, Philip F. Williams and Yenna Wu outline the evolution of the laogai system, construct a vivid picture of prisoners' lives from arrest and interrogation to release, and provide a troubling new perspective on the human rights issues plaguing China.

This interdisciplinary volume of essays studies human rights in political prison literature, while probing the intersections of suffering, politics, and aesthetics in an interliterary and intercultural context. As the first book to explore the concept of global aesthetics in political prison narratives, it demonstrates how literary insight enhances the study of human rights. Covering varied geographical and geopolitical regions, this collection encourages comparative analyses and cross-cultural understanding. Seeking to interrogate linguistic, structural, and cultural constructions of the political prison experience, it highlights the literary aspects without losing sight of the political and the theoretical. The contributors cross various disciplinary boundaries and adopt different interpretive perspectives in analyzing prison narratives, especially memoirs, from such diverse countries as China, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Romania, Russia, Uruguay, and the U.S. The volume emphasizes the literary works produced since the second half of the twentieth century, particularly since the political seismic shift in 1989. The authors treated range from the canonical to the less well-known: Nawal El Saadawi, Varlam Shalamov, Zhang Xianliang, Cong Weixi, Wumingshi, Carlos Liscano, Fatna El Bouih, Nabil Sulayman, Faraj Bayraqdar, Hasiba 'Abdalrahman, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Nicolae Steinhardt, Irina Ratushinskaya, etc. Critical issues investigated include how the writers represent their sufferings, experiences, and emotions during incarceration; their strategies of survival; and how political prison literature can reveal hidden violations of human rights, while resisting official discourse and serving other functions in society. Examining the commonalities and differences in global experiences of imprisonment, the eight chapters engage with the aesthetics of self-making and resistance, individual and collective memory, denial and conversion, catharsis and redemption, and the experiencing and witnessing of trauma. Topics also include the politics of remembering and the politics of representation, such as the problematic relationship between narrative, language, and representations of torture. Similarly under discussion are prison aesthetics of happiness, the role of spectacle in the criminal justice system, and the intersection of prison, gender, and silences. At a juncture when more and more people all over the world actively defy repressive regimes and demand political reform, this book makes a timely contribution to the advocacy and discourse of universal human rights.