Women's writing in postsocialist China has seen phenomenal growth in recent years, and this book examines this growth and its relationship to the transformation of women's lives, introducing readers to a range and variety of contemporary Chinese women's writing. Exploring recent social, cultural, geographic, literary, economic, and political movements and trends, cultural formations and ways of thinking, it asks how the texts and the concepts they negotiate might be understood within China and how they might be interpreted differently elsewhere in the world. The book argues that women-centred writing in China has a direct bearing on global feminist theory and practice.

1. Introduction: Women Writers in Postsocialist China 2. Translations of the Self: Hong Ying's Daughter of the River and Summer of Betrayal 3. Narrative, Trauma and Memory: Chen Ran's A Private Life 4. Silence and the Silenced - Literary Renderings of Rural Women's Lives in and Beyond China: Lin Bai's Record of Women's Chatting, Sheng Keyi's Northern Girls, and Xinran's Transnational Interventions 5. 'Beauty Writers', Consumer Culture, and Global China: Wei Hui's Shanghai Baby, Mian Mian's Candy, and the Internet Generation 6. Revisiting the Twentieth Century: Zhang Yihe's Historical Memoirs and Chen Danyan's Shanghai Trilogy 7. Reconstructing the Past: Zhao Mei's Biography of Tang Dynasty Emperor, Woman: Wu Zetian 8. Epic Re-Visionings: Xu Xiaobin's Fabulist Tale, Feathered Serpent 9. Conclusion: New Desires, New Identities: Reorienting Literary and Gender Relations in and Beyond China

Kay Schaffer is an Adjunct Professor in Gender Studies and Social Analysis at the University of Adelaide, Australia.

Xianlin Song is a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Asian Studies at the University of Adelaide, Australia.