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This volume is the first serious attempt to reconstruct Ding Ling's biography during the last few decades of her life. Most Westerners know her as a progressive woman writer who became famous during the May 4 Movement, championed its values in Yan'an and was criticized in the rectification campaigns that followed. Few know about her life afterward and the arduous process of rehabilitation. Here for the first time readers will learn about her life in the Great Northern Wasteland, solitary confinement in Qincheng prison, her visit to the United States, participation in the spiritual pollution campaign, and finally, the attempt to launch the journal
China. All of this puts a new perspective on the life of one of China's most preeminent woman writers.
Alber includes considerable new information about the rectification campaigns of the late fifties, supplemented by a series of interviews with the author and her contemporaries in the years 1980 and 1981, the very point when she began to turn left and to compromise her progressive beliefs. Ding Ling is generally acknowledged as a major figure of the May 4 Movement and an ardent admirer of Lu Xun. As such, the study sheds light on the legacy of China's greatest writer and the influence of Western ideals on contemporary Chinese literature. The primary audience is the educated reader who has an interest in contemporary Chinese literature and politics. It should be especially interesting to women, but the coverage is broad enough to include anyone interested in the intellectual history of China.
List of contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Striding into a New Era
Leaning to One Side
Elevating the Combative Spirit
To Better Serve the People
Counterrevolutionaries
Rectification, the Prelude
The Anti-Rightist Campaign
In the Great Northern Wasteland
The Cultural Revolution
Cowpen
In Prison
Shanxi Revisted
In the Bosom of the Party
Interviewing Ding Ling
The America That She Saw
Spiritual Pollution
The Journal China
Epilogue
Appendix I
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the author
CHARLES J. ALBER is Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, Department of Germanic, Slavic, and East Asian Languages and Literatures, University of South Carolina.
