Sophia C. reviewed on 1/14/2013 + 289 more book reviews

Don't judge a book by its title! This is one lesson I learned from The Good Women of China. A gift from a family friend, it languished on my bookshelf for many months because I thought it would be steeped in quasi-sentimental metaphors. Instead, it is a collection of the most poignant stories that former radio presenter Xinran encountered through her career at Radio Nanjing in the 1990s, when China was opening up under Deng Xiaoping's orders. Growing up amidst chaos, political and emotional repression, and ignorance about sex and relationships, through interviewing many women Xinran tries to understand and share reflections on the nature of Chinese women. Her nightly program, Words on the Night Breeze, became very popular among female listeners. In somewhat formal and stilted language (perhaps inherent to translation), this is a book that Xinran could not write until she moved to London, for it describes the horrors of the Cultural Revolution in terms of forced marriages, rapes, and general abuse for being of the wrong background. It provided a valuable glimpse into that tumultuous period (which is conceivably the reason for this gift), but this is a work that can easily make one feel pessimistic about men and the persistently unequal gender roles in Chinese culture lest one can detect the slim silver lining in the strength of the women who endured. They are good because they spoke up, not because they followed the Confucian virtue of silence and modesty.

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