When "I" Was Born: Chapter 4

In the first of four brief studies of authors of book-length autobiographies, Wang considers the work of Lu Yin, particularly her 1934 Autobiography, to be among the earliest voices to develop themes that we see in later women's autobiographies in China, including the "awakening consciousness of oppression" that first develops from earliest childhood memories of home life and extends to school and adolescence. In Lu Yin's case, her birth on the day of her grandmother's death makes her particularly unwelcome in an already misogynist household. "This is the inglorious beginning of Lu Yin's life as told in her autobiography, rare in Chinese life writing by men but recurrent in that by women." "By relating her birth as a jarring incident," says Wang, "Lu Yin cuts the tie with her family and foreshadows her separate, isolated identity as an individual woman.(108-9) This theme continues as Lu Yin grows up in an abusive household, strategizing for her own education, recognizing the power of education for attaining independence in a world of oppression, and identifying early role models in teachers like Hu Shi, and later, autobiographies that she read. Wang finds in all of this "a microhistory of educated Chinese women's fight for new womanhood through writing."

A second and equally important model laid down in Lu Yin's autobiography is the development of a new understanding of love and marriage informed by her awakening opposition to the traditional gender framework. Lu Yin found love with a young man when the two realized they shared a love of literature, but the relationship ended when Lu decided that a traditional marriage would not allow her to have a career as a writer; she felt at the time that "marriage would ruin my life." This potential for a severe opposition between traditional female roles and newly opened up public and professional roles is a theme that would infuse nearly all women's autobiographies from this point forward, and receives its first extended treatment in Lu Yin's work.