Name: The Good Women of China
ISBN: 9781400030804

Xinran Xue

Hidden Voices

The Good Women of China

Gavin

Horrible and yet somehow ripping portrait of patriarchal suffering. It's undermined by the editing; the narrative is too neat (at one point she happens to bump into the family of the homeless woman that called her saying how much she missed them). Maybe she just had a very cinematic few years, as one of the most famous women in the country, but the many coincidences and stranger-than-fiction dovetails make it difficult to take it too seriously. I don’t actually doubt that the interviews happened, nor that she received the aggregate worry and misery for thousands. It's just that she portrays as a little village where Xinran was wise mother, with all distant rumours bursting into her life. 

Maybe my reaction is a cheap defence against e.g. the thought of an 11 year old repeatedly giving themselves pneumonia to avoid their rapist father and other tales of ordinary madness.

The Good Women of China Hidden Voices