Abstract
“Living as a woman in silence”, Yu Luojin lamented in 1982, “is not as tough as telling the truth in public.” Yu Luojin published three autobiographical works before she finally sought political asylum during a trip to West Germany in 1986. At least 10,000 characters were removed from her first autobiographical novel when it was published in 1980, due to the “jarring” (ci er) personal voices, including her depiction of her wedding night and her different views on love, marriage, and sex. Her second autobiographical novel, which was based upon her love relationship with an associate chief editor of Guangming ribao, was banned shordy after it was published in Hua cheng in 1982. It was criticized as exposing private matters in public and advocating improper relationships. As a twice-divorced woman in the early 1980s, her fame was raised through public gossip as well. She was attacked as a nonserious (bu jiandian) woman in the most important newspaper and journal in Beijing and was negatively stamped as a writer on private affairs (yinsi zuojia).
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Notes
Chen Ran, “Zuojia de gerenhua” (The personalization of writers), in Ah-er de xiaowu(The Small Room of Ah-er), ed. Chen Ran (Beijing: Huayi chubanshe, 1998).
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Lin Bai, Tigeren de zhanzheng (A Self at War) (Hohhot: Neimenggu renmin chubanshe, 1996);
and Wang Anyi, Toushang de niandai (Tears of Sadness) (Taipei: Maitian chubanshe, 1999). Translation of A Private Life is from John Howard-Gibbon’s text with my modifications; translations of other novels and essays by these three writers are done by Mary Ann O’Donnell and myself.
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© 2005 Charles A. Laughlin
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Wang, L. (2005). Reproducing the Self: Consumption, Imaginary, and Identity in Chinese Women’s Autobiographical Practice in the 1990s. In: Laughlin, C.A. (eds) Contested Modernities in Chinese Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981332_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981332_11
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