As boas mulheres da China: autobiografia, memória e questões femininas da revolução cultural

Abstract

The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices (2003) is a non-fiction work of literature composed of testimonies of Chinese women transcribed under a literary aesthetic by the writer and journalist Xinran Xue. This dissertation aims to analyze the representation of these women in the work, which occurs through the intertwining of their memories and testimonies to the author's life. Most of the accounts are narrated in the first person by Xinran (2003), so the work has predominantly autobiographical characteristics, but also has the elements of memory and testimony already mentioned, and also contains some journalistic aspects, which makes it a hybrid genre work. Most of the stories told in The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices (2003) take place during the years when Mao Zedong was the Chairman of the Communist Party of China (1949-1976) and are directly influenced by the politics of the time. In the area of literature of the Brazilian academy, works that refer to this period are still not much explored by researchers, therefore, to facilitate the understanding of readers, this work has a historical recapitulation of the main events that occurred in China during the 20th century. In addition, the roots of women's literature in China are also discussed and, in a very superficial way, some concepts of Confucianism, so that one can better understand the archaic conceptions that influence until today the meaning of being a good woman in this country. This is a bibliographic and qualitative study, and its main theoretical reference is Halbwachs (1990), Ricœur (2020) on the study of memory; Lejeune (1975), Hershatter (2011) and Dosse (2015) on autobiography and testimony; Pomar (2003) and Shu (2012), on the history of China in the 20th century; Denton (2016) on modern Chinese literature; and Liu, Karl and Ko (2013) and Pang-White (2018) on female-authored literature in China; Norden (2018) on Confucianism; and Lerner (2017) on patriarchy. It is expected with this study to demonstrate that the history and experience of women permeate a tradition of dominion determined by patriarchy, in a similar way, in different cultures.