Red Peonies : : Two Novellas of China / / Zhang Yihe; ed. by Frank Stewart.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Contemporary Collection eBook Package
• VerfasserIn: Yihe, Zhang,
• TeilnehmendeR: Gernant, Karen.; Zeping, Chen.
• HerausgeberIn: Stewart, Frank,
• Place / Publishing House: Honolulu : : University of Hawaii Press, , [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: Mānoa ; 3
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (200 p.)

Red Peonies: Two Novellas of China is the first translation in English of two of the books written by Zhang Yihe about women she met and befriended in prison. The subjects of her stories have been described as “beautiful women who wielded magic power over men. They were like jealous evil spirits, vengeful treacherous persons—countless snakes coiled around other people.”Zhang Yihe was fifteen in 1957, the year her father was declared an enemy of the People’s Republic of China. Denounced as the nation’s Number One Rightist, he was persecuted by Chairman Mao. Zhang herself was arrested at age twenty-eight and sentenced to twenty-one years in a remote labor prison. While in the women’s prison, she came to know the other inmates, most of whom were from farms and lacked education. In 2011, at age seventy, she began to write and publish her fictionalized accounts of some of the women. The novellas were quickly censored in China, but have become widely popular in pirated, unexpurgated editions in the PRC, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Zhang Yihe is now an outspoken advocate of free expression. Red Peonies contains the first two novellas in Zhang’s projected series of ten. Never before translated into English, the works are powerfully written, tender, and sorrowful. They bring to life the stories of Chinese women caught in the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. This volume includes the work of Xing Danwen, an internationally known artist based in Beijing.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Editors’ Note -- The Woman Liu -- Preface -- Chapter One -- Chapter Two -- Chapter Three -- Chapter Four -- Chapter Five -- Chapter Six -- Chapter Seven -- Chapter Eight -- Chapter Nine -- The Woman Yang -- Prologue -- PART ONE -- Chapter One -- Chapter Two -- Chapter Three -- Chapter Four -- Chapter Five -- Chapter Six -- Chapter Seven -- Chapter Eight -- Chapter Nine -- Chapter Ten -- Chapter Eleven -- PART TWO -- Chapter Twelve -- Chapter Thirteen -- Chapter Fourteen -- Chapter Fifteen -- Chapter Sixteen -- Chapter Seventeen -- Chapter Eighteen -- Chapter Nineteen -- Epilogue -- Afterword -- FEATURED ARTIST AND TRANSLATORS