Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs

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Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs

by Xian Wang

University of Michigan Press, 2025

ISBNs

Cloth: 978-0-472-07719-9

Paper: 978-0-472-05719-1

eISBN: 978-0-472-90481-5 (OA)

About the Book

Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs takes readers on a journey through the lives and legacies of Chinese female revolutionary martyrs, revealing how their sacrifices have been remembered, commemorated, and manipulated throughout history. This innovative book blends historical narratives with personal narratives, creating an “imaginary museum” where the stories of these women are brought to life. Author Xian Wang employs this imaginary museum to create a conceptual space mirroring an actual museum that juxtaposes historical narratives with countermemories of Chinese female revolutionaries, such as the prominent writer Ding Ling. Exploring Ding’s experiences with martyrdom and the commemoration of female revolutionary martyrs associated with her, the book provides a compelling argument that female revolutionary martyrdom reinforces, rather than rejects, the traditional concept of female chastity martyrdom. Narratives that challenge established gender norms, particularly those surrounding female chastity, have often been silenced or overlooked in the collective memory of these female revolutionary martyrs. By delving into these countermemories, Wang provides fresh insights into gendered violence, memories, and politics in modern Chinese literature and culture.

About the Author

Xian Wang is Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Notre Dame.

Reviews

"Wang's richly illustrated book is poised to make important contributions to our teaching and research of modern Chinese culture, Chinese female revolutionaries, gender politics, and the making of national and personal memories, and should be read by anyone interested in these topics and anyone interested in reading a richly informative book."— Liang Luo, Studies on Asia

“Wang's monograph reveals the gendered dimension of the construction of revolutionary memory…This book radically deconstructs the political metaphor of chastity and argues that when the state attempts to reinforce revolutionary legitimacy through ‘chastity martyrdom,’ it inadvertently constructs a cognitive framework that obscures women's revolutionary agency.”

— Jocelyn Xu, Women's History Review

“Charming and fascinating. Gendered Memories will change how Anglophone Ding Ling studies will proceed from now on.”— Tani Barlow, Rice University

“By highlighting the gaps in official history and piecing together fragments of private memories, Gendered Memories reconstructs for us a rich and multivalent picture of modern Chinese history.”

— Hu Ying, Nan Nü: Men, Women, and Gender in China

“Gendered Memories is invaluable to those interested in collective memory, female sexuality, politics of representation, modern Chinese literature, and the Communist women's movement.”

— Lin Li, Journal of Asian Studies

“Wang's Gendered Memories contributes signficantly to the field of Chinese studies, in particular Chinese literature and history. It also provides valuable insights for anyone interested in gender, memory or literature studies who hopes to gain a Chinese perspective that informs then about the power ”the CCP" had over cultural production and historiography while allowing that women like Ding Ling were also “the CCP.”

— Emily Graf, The China Quarterly

“This impressive work will be welcomed for its fresh analysis of key female figures in China’s revolutionary history and novel contribution to our understandings of memory, national commemoration, and gender.”— Louise Edwards, University of New South Wales