When "I" Was Born: Chapter 3

Having described the publication arena that brought autobiography to China in the 1920s through the 1940s, Wang turns in the third chapter to five anthologies of short autobiographies published between 1936-1945. Composed of submissions in response to the autobiographical literature broadcast by Lin Yutang and his constantly struggling publishing machine, these collections show that a mass readership in China was inspired and energized by a new pattern of self-fashioning, and it shows that women readers responded especially strongly. Wang demonstrates that the short autobiography evolved to fit the needs of wartime publications, but at the same time were a manageable, easy-to-read craft that a wide range of young writers quickly latched onto as necessary tools for self expression. Just as Wang says, the production and publication of these anthologies "was an act of literary democracy."

Wang surveys all of the collections deftly, showing that major themes of later autobiographies first appear here. Especially to be noted is the ever-present "dissociation from femininity" that pervades many of the texts that Wang examines throughout the book. "Women's refusal to discuss domestic life in their autobiographies serves as a good index of their new self-definition in the public arena." As Wang's discussion of these life stories shows, "refusal" is far too strong a term. Certainly, some writers distanced themselves from traditional female values: Fan Xiulin defends her decision to wear short hair, Xie Bingying, her dirty socks. And one brave woman openly dreams of adopting a lesbian lifestyle. But more often, these writers wish not to cut themselves off from femininity, but to renegotiate it. A writer named Meng Zhuo wants to make work and school part of the same project. Li Su loves being a mom, and finds room for progressive thought in it.

Some of the writers represented in these collections, like Zhang Ailing (Eileen Chang) and Xie Bingying (Hsieh Pingying) would go on to greater fame and recognition, but sadly, the changing political and economic tides would snuff out many of these new voices after 1945. By redirecting our attention to these unique examples of emerging autobiographical practice in a country which, though highly literate, did not encourage dwelling on personal and self-oriented prose literature, Wang provides a valuable service to the field of life writing more generally.