The Burden of Female Talent

The Burden of Female Talent
Author: Ronald Egan
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2020-10-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1684170745

Widely considered the preeminent Chinese woman poet, Li Qingzhao (1084-1150s) occupies a crucial place in China’s literary and cultural history. She stands out as the great exception to the rule that the first-rank poets in premodern China were male. But at what price to our understanding of her as a writer does this distinction come? The Burden of Female Talent challenges conventional modes of thinking about Li Qingzhao as a devoted but often lonely wife and, later, a forlorn widow. By examining manipulations of her image by the critical tradition in later imperial times and into the twentieth century, Ronald C. Egan brings to light the ways in which critics sought to accommodate her to cultural norms, molding her “talent” to make it compatible with ideals of womanly conduct and identity. Contested images of Li, including a heated controversy concerning her remarriage and its implications for her “devotion” to her first husband, reveal the difficulty literary culture has had in coping with this woman of extraordinary conduct and ability. The study ends with a reappraisal of Li’s poetry, freed from the autobiographical and reductive readings that were traditionally imposed on it and which remain standard even today.

Warrior Women

Warrior Women
Author: Lisa Funnell
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2014-05-19
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1438452500

Finalist for the 2014 ForeWord IndieFab Book of the Year Award in the Women's Studies Category Bronze Medalist, 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the Women Issues Category Winnerof the 2015 Emily Toth Award presented by the Popular Culture Association & American Culture Association Warrior Women considers the significance of Chinese female action stars in martial arts films produced across a range of national and transnational contexts. Lisa Funnell examines the impact of the 1997 transfer of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule on the representation of Chinese identities—Hong Kong Chinese, mainland Chinese, Chinese American, Chinese Canadian—in action films produced domestically in Hong Kong and, increasingly, in cooperation with mainland China and Hollywood. Hong Kong cinema has offered space for the development of transnational Chinese screen identities that challenge the racial stereotypes historically associated with the Asian female body in the West. The ethnic/national differentiation of transnational Chinese female stars—such as Pei Pei Cheng, Charlene Choi, Gong Li, Lucy Liu, Shu Qi, Michelle Yeoh, and Zhang Ziyi—is considered part of the ongoing negotiation of social, cultural, and geopolitical identities in the Chinese-speaking world.

Isle of Woman

Isle of Woman
Author: Piers Anthony
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 484
Release: 1994-09-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780812533668

Fantasy history of the human race told through the experiences of a single human family reincarnated through the ages.

Lean In

Lean In
Author: Sheryl Sandberg
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2013-03-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0385349955

#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • “A landmark manifesto" (The New York Times) that's a revelatory, inspiring call to action and a blueprint for individual growth that will empower women around the world to achieve their full potential. In her famed TED talk, Sheryl Sandberg described how women unintentionally hold themselves back in their careers. Her talk, which has been viewed more than eleven million times, encouraged women to “sit at the table,” seek challenges, take risks, and pursue their goals with gusto. Lean In continues that conversation, combining personal anecdotes, hard data, and compelling research to change the conversation from what women can’t do to what they can. Sandberg, COO of Meta (previously called Facebook) from 2008-2022, provides practical advice on negotiation techniques, mentorship, and building a satisfying career. She describes specific steps women can take to combine professional achievement with personal fulfillment, and demonstrates how men can benefit by supporting women both in the workplace and at home.

What We Owe Each Other

What We Owe Each Other
Author: Minouche Shafik
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2022-08-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 069120764X

From one of the leading policy experts of our time, an urgent rethinking of how we can better support each other to thrive Whether we realize it or not, all of us participate in the social contract every day through mutual obligations among our family, community, place of work, and fellow citizens. Caring for others, paying taxes, and benefiting from public services define the social contract that supports and binds us together as a society. Today, however, our social contract has been broken by changing gender roles, technology, new models of work, aging, and the perils of climate change. Minouche Shafik takes us through stages of life we all experience—raising children, getting educated, falling ill, working, growing old—and shows how a reordering of our societies is possible. Drawing on evidence and examples from around the world, she shows how every country can provide citizens with the basics to have a decent life and be able to contribute to society. But we owe each other more than this. A more generous and inclusive society would also share more risks collectively and ask everyone to contribute for as long as they can so that everyone can fulfill their potential. What We Owe Each Other identifies the key elements of a better social contract that recognizes our interdependencies, supports and invests more in each other, and expects more of individuals in return. Powerful, hopeful, and thought-provoking, What We Owe Each Other provides practical solutions to current challenges and demonstrates how we can build a better society—together.

Talent

Talent
Author: Juliet Lapidos
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020-03-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780316480567

In this "deliciously funny, sharp, and sincere" debut (Helen Oyeyemi), a young graduate student writing about -- and desperately searching for -- inspiration stumbles upon it in the unlikeliest of places. Anna Brisker is a twenty-nine-year-old graduate student in English at Collegiate University who can't seem to finish her dissertation. Her project: an intellectual history of inspiration. And yet, for the first time, Anna has found herself utterly uninspired. Rather than work on her thesis, she spends her days eating Pop-Tarts and walking the gritty streets of New Harbor, Connecticut. As Anna's adviser is quick to remind her, time is running out. She needs the perfect case study to anchor her thesis, and she needs it now. Amid this mounting pressure, Anna strikes up a tenuous friendship with the niece of famous author Frederick Langley. Freddy wrote three successful books as a young man, then published exactly nothing for the rest of his wayward, hermetic life. Critics believe Freddy suffered from an acute case of writer's block, but his niece tells Anna that there's more to the story: When he died, he was at work on something new. With exclusive access to the notebooks of an author who was inspired, uninspired, and potentially reinspired, Anna knows she's found the perfect case study. But as fascination with Freddy blooms into obsession, Anna is drawn irrevocably into the criminal machinations of his sole living heir. A modern twist on the Parable of the Talents, Lapidos's debut is a many-layered labyrinth of possible truths that reveal at each turn the danger of interpreting another person's intentions -- literary or otherwise. One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year -- LitHub, The Millions, Thrillist, Entertainment Weekly

Crossing the Gate

Crossing the Gate
Author: Man Xu
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2016-10-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1438463219

Challenges the accepted wisdom about women and gender roles in medieval China. In Crossing the Gate, Man Xu examines the lives of women in the Chinese province of Fujian during the Song dynasty. Tracking women’s life experience across class lines, outside as well as inside the domestic realm, Xu challenges the accepted wisdom about women and gender roles in medieval China. She contextualizes women in a much broader physical space and social network, investigating the gaps between ideals and reality and examining women’s own agency in gender construction. She argues that women’s autonomy and mobility, conventionally attributed to Ming-Qing women of late imperial China, can be traced to the Song era. This thorough study of Song women’s life experience connects women to the great political, economic, and social transitions of the time, and sheds light on the so-called “Song-Yuan-Ming transition” from the perspective of gender studies. By putting women at the center of analysis and by focusing on the local and the quotidian, Crossing the Gate offers a new and nuanced picture of the Song Confucian revival.

Equality for Women = Prosperity for All

Equality for Women = Prosperity for All
Author: Augusto Lopez-Claros
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2018-10-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1466852046

A groundbreaking book about the direct relationship between a woman's rights and freedoms and the economic prosperity of her country. "The authors speak to hearts as well as minds." —Maud de Boer Buquicchio, UN Special Rapporteur “Not only timely but profoundly important—a must-read." Jackie Jones, Professor of Feminist Legal studies Gender discrimination is often seen from a human rights perspective; it is a violation of women’s basic human rights, as embedded in the Universal Declaration, the UN Charter and other such founding documents. Moreover, there is overwhelming evidence that restrictions and various forms of discrimination against women are also bad economics. They undermine the talent pool available to the private sector, they distort power relationships within the family and lead to inefficiencies in the use of resources. They contribute to create an environment in which women, de facto, are second class citizens, with fewer options than men, lower quality jobs, lower pay, often the victims of various forms of violence, literally from the cradle to the grave. They are also not fully politically empowered and have scant presence in the corridors of power, whether as finance ministers, central bank governors, prime ministers or on the boards of leading corporations. Why is gender inequality so pervasive? Where does it come from? Does it have cultural and religious roots? And what are the sorts of policies and values that will deliver a world in which being born a boy or a girl is no longer a measure of the likelihood of developing one’s human potential?

The Works of Li Qingzhao

The Works of Li Qingzhao
Author: Ronald Egan
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2019-01-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501504436

Previous translations and descriptions of Li Qingzhao are molded by an image of her as lonely wife and bereft widow formed by centuries of manipulation of her work and legacy by scholars and critics (all of them male) to fit their idea of a what a talented woman writer would sound like. The true voice of Li Qingzhao is very different. A new translation and presentation of her is needed to appreciate her genius and to account for the sense that Chinese readers have always had, despite what scholars and critics were saying, about the boldness and originality of her work. The introduction will lay out the problems of critical refashioning and conventionalization of her carried out in the centuries after her death, thus preparing the reader for a new reading. Her songs and poetry will then be presented in a way that breaks free of a narrow autobiographical reading of them, distinguishes between reliable and unreliable attributions, and also shows the great range of her talent by including important prose pieces and seldom read poems. In this way, the standard image of Li Qingzhao, exemplied by a handful of her best known and largely misunderstood works, will be challenged and replaced by a new understanding. The volume will present a literary portrait of Li Qingzhao radically unlike the one in conventional anthologies and literary histories, allowing English readers for the first time to appreciate her distinctiveness as a writer and to properly gauge her achievement as a female alternative, as poet and essayist, to the male literary culture of her day.