Cadet Killian Buckley's Blog

Wang once said, “I firmly believe that an individual, and a people, must possess the insight and courage to engage in self-examination. This spirit of self-examination is what guarantees that individuals will become real human beings, and that a people will develop into a strong and worthy nation.”

I am completing an Arab Capstone project for my Modern Languages and Cultures Major about the role that female women writers in Morocco play in the cultural changes of women in the nation and the region.  In relation to this project for Politics in East Asia, I found a particularly interesting Chinese  female writer, Wang Anyi.  Her work is considered some of the most important modern Chinese literature of the 1990’s.  She, like many of the Arab women writers that I discuss in my Arabic Capstone, takes a personal approach to writing and wants to give a voice to the younger generation, particularly a generation of women.  Her novels, also, tend to be controversial and cover taboo topics that have previously not been discussed to much length by many other writers.

Under China’s “One Child Policy”, many families preferred having males rather than females due to the fact that males carried on the family name and were considered more vital to society.  This cultural ideal could be shown through the rate of the unreported forced abortions and infanticide.  There was also a high rate of “sex-selected” abortions. While, I have yet to read any English translations of her novels, it would be interesting to hear the voice of a women writer, who is writing during this time of the “One Child Policy” in a culture that found the male life more important.