Echoes of Chongqing : women in wartime China / Danke Li.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Li, Danke, 1953-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945--Women.

Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945.

Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945--China--Chongqing.

Women--China--Chongqing--History--20th century.

Women.

Women--China--Chongqing--Interviews.

Oral history--China--Chongqing.

Oral history.

Chongqing (China)--Biography.

Chongqing (China).

Chongqing (China)--History, Military--20th century.

Chongqing (China)--Social conditions--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (231 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This collection of annotated oral histories records the personal stories of twenty Chinese women who lived in the wartime capital of Chongqing during China's War of Resistance against Japan during World War II. By presenting women's remembrances of the war, this study examines the interplay between oral history and traditional historical narrative, public discourse, and private memories. The women interviewed came from differing social, economic, and educational backgrounds and experienced the war in a variety of ways, some of them active in the communist resistance and others trying to support families or pursue educations in the face of wartime upheaval. Their stories demonstrate that the War of Resistance had two faces: one presented by official propaganda and characterized by an upbeat unified front against Japan, the other a record of invisible private stories and a sobering national experience of death and suffering. The accounts of how women coped, worked, and lived during the war years in the Chongqing region recast historical understanding of the roles played by ordinary people in wartime and give women a public voice and face that, until now, have been missing from scholarship on the war.

Contents:

Introduction: History, women, and China's war of resistance against Japan

pt. 1. The war and gender's social roles

Prologue

Students

A Xiajiang woman

A doctor's wife

A girl of the ZZEB

A teacher of the ZZEB

A woman from a rich and powerful family

Women from poor peasant families

pt. 2. The war and gender's economic impact

Daughters

A tailor's wife

An abandoned housewife

A Minsheng employee

A Yuhua textile factory worker

A woman of the Songji Experimental Zone

pt. 3. The war and gender's political impact

A Communist woman working for the XYCZFZW

A student revolutionary

A Jiuguohui woman

An underground CCP member

pt. 4. Women, memory, and China's war of resistance against Japan

Epilogue.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786613028938

9781283028936

128302893X

9780252091735

0252091736

OCLC:

708738131