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indispensable perspective to modern Chinese literature (as testimony) and the relations it has to historical events drenched in blood and tears. When put into words, memories of life during the Mao era have a better chance of surviving erasure; and with this book, the chances of their survival increase multifold. The Great Leap Backward will attract a wide variety of readers from comparative literature, Sinophone studies, modern Chinese literature, historical and memory studies—and for many years to come.”
—Chien-hsin Tsai,
Director of World Languages, City University of Seattle; and
author of A Passage to China and coeditor of Sinophone Studies
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“The first three decades of the People’s Republic of China’s history was dominated by a series of incessant and often violent political movements: from the Land Reform movement to the Anti-Rightist Campaign and from the Great Leap Forward to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. However, as Letty Chen demonstrates in The Great Leap Backward: Forgetting and Representing the Mao Years, this crucial page in China’s history has been repeatedly downplayed, whitewashed, or even erased in official narratives and discourse. Chen’s study involves piecing together the remnants of this history as told through a rich cross-section of contemporary fiction. Through her readings of writers like Mo Yan, Su Tong, Can Xue, Dai Houying, Yu Hua, and Yan Lianke, Chen not only excavates the underbelly of national history but also shines a bright light on some of contemporary China’s most brilliant literary voices.”
—Michael Berry,
Director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies; and
author of A History of Pain and Speaking in Image