Heroines of the Qing

"This study is not only of interest to students of traditional Chinese women’s literature. It ranges over fields as widely apart as print culture, art history, social history and medical history. In each of these fields it shows a far more assertive participation of women than is commonly assumed. . . . Equally relevant to the students of Republican history as to the students of Qing history. The book is very well written and throughout a pleasure to read."

"Through women’s own writings, Yang greatly expands our picture of gentry women’s roles in Qing society. She shows how women used their writings, not just to seek literary immortality through publication, but to empower themselves and to reform and renew their society. . . . Binbin Yang has made a most valuable contribution to our understanding of late Qing social, literary and political history."

"Binbin Yang’s book illuminates a new direction in the study of women’s literature in late imperial China. Aiming at (re)discovering women’s own autobiographical voices, this innovative and engaging book goes beyond poetry, which is often the source of such studies, to explore neglected literary and artistic genres: prefaces, (auto)biographies, inscriptions, paintings, letters, political essays, and medical texts . . . Yang has extended the discussion on writing women in late imperial China from a small privileged group of upper-class gentry women to educated women in poor households."

"To those who have read ad nauseam the eulogies of long-suffering widows or women who committed suicide to guard their chastity in the predominant late imperial discourse on female exemplarity, Yang’s book offers a welcome alternative view of women’s lives that is not only more felicitous but also more representative . . . Methodologically innovative, carefully researched, and clearly written, Yang’s book makes an important contribution to the study of Chinese women’s history and will be used widely in both teaching and research."

"Binbin Yang’s pathbreaking study of Qing women writers’ self-empowerment as female exemplars takes the field of women’s culture in late imperial China to a whole new level. In addition to exploring women’s previously well-known talent in poetry, Yang engages with a diverse range of texts by women in unexpected genres – such as genealogy writing, medical treatises, and inscriptions to autobiographical paintings – to reveal the lived realities of these writing heroines. A stunning achievement."

"A daring, path-opening book. The integration of narration and analysis makes the book accessible to the lay reader while speaking to specialists in history and literature."

"This is the first book to examine exemplary women’s own accounts of their lives, moving from biographical to autobiographical accounts. Heroines of the Qing is original and significant."