Ming and Qing wrote poetry and prose about their own lives and the larger life beyond, and Fong (Chinese literature, McGill U.) gracefully analyzes the autobiographical poetry of Gan Lirou, the
literature of the concubines, the tradition of women's travel literature, and the presence of rhetoric and community in women's poetic criticism. She finds that the women of the gentry wrote as
a form of cultural practice, and that their texts examined their subject positions between texts and society. She offers three remarkable texts, translated into English for the first time.
Annotation 穢2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
