Review of Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era (edited by Zueping Zhong, Wang Zheng, and Bai Di) 14 February 2008 LLCO.org “[At the fifty-first annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in 1999 panel discussion ‘Memory and the Cultural Revolution,’ during] the question-and-answer period, someone stated that she had …
Summations, Questions, Answers: a Short Lesson on Revolutionary History LLCO.org Science prevents us from rowing in circles “Greats have come before us. We must learn from them. We must absorb their lessons. We are a link in a long chain of heroes and martyrs. We must rise to the occasion. Shine brightly. Head up. Follow …
Kink versus vanilla LLCO.org The following letter was sent in response to our review of Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs: “I still don’t see what is wrong with ‘raunch,’ so long as it comes from a point of equal footing. In the non-hierarchical world we would like to see, I feel it’s perfectly fine for …
Some of Us is an anthology of autobiographical writings by Chinese women from petty-bourgeois backgrounds who grew up during the Cultural Revolution decade, but later moved to the United States to pursue academic careers. The authors are not representative of the majority of Chinese women. Many of the authors are hostile to communism. In addition, the compilation suffers from the inherent limits of oral history, anecdotal approaches. Nonetheless, the book complicates the victim/victimizer narratives of the Cultural Revolution decade; it contains important insights into gender in the Mao era. Despite its flaws, the book provides a welcome contrast to mainstream anti-communist history.
Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs documents the rise of what she calls “raunch culture” and the roles that women in the United States play in that culture. The book documents something very real. However, it is not just a sociological report. It is also a polemic of sorts against the now popular camp of bourgeois feminists known as “sex-positive feminism.” The book is a return to the second wave bourgeois feminism. Levy has more in common with a Catherine Mackinnon or Andrea Dworkin than her sex-positive contemporaries. The book represents one kind of bourgeois feminism arguing against another. The book never overcomes the limits of bourgeois thought and bourgeois conceptions of gender. The book does not cover how its topic intersects with global class and imperialism.