Chinese Literature and Culture - Vol 8 - December, 2016

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This volume features a collection of writings by Lu Xun Prize for Literature winner Zhang Yawen, China's female Gorky. In this volume, we have a short sketch “First Love at a Deathbed,” a pathetic story of Yawen’s Third Elder Sister regretting not having fought for her own life on her deathbed. “Dog Girl” is Ying Kong’s English adaptation of excerpts of Yawen’s early fight against fate in getting her limited education. “The Hawthorn Tree at the Beginning of My Life,” translated by the smiling but serious translator Tina Sim, documents the hard life of the family life in a valley with its suppressed aspirations and feelings. “In Respect and Awe” is Vincent Dong’s translation of Yawen’s preface to her prize-winning biographical novel Playing Games with the Devil, for the writing of which she made many interview trips to Europe on her own. In “Zhang Yawen’s Calling: Rising Against All Odds,” Ying Kong gives an in-depth introduction to the Lu Xun Prize winning autobiography The Call of Life (translated as Cry for Life in an existing English translation) with a poetic summary of the author’s life in the first person singular.