Big Breasts And Wide Hips

This is a highly ambitious work for any author or translator to undertake. Detailing life in rural China from 1940-the post-Mao era, Big Breasts and Wide Hips chronicles the lives of mother and her nine chidren. Mother is a symbol of female empowerment.This overt female prowess is strikingly different from the portrayal of women in fiction during similar periods in Chinese history. Due to her husband's sterility, mother is forced to enter into adulterous relationships with various men in order to give her husband the son he both wants and needs. Mother consciously deifes traditional morals in order, ironically, to uphold the tradition of a woman's worth being defined by her sons. Mo Yan uses the female body as a trope for the motherland, China. Instead of just portraying mother as a woman, a mother, or a wife, she is used in a way that brings together a series of historical, political, and cultural events that span her lifetime. Big Breasts and Wide Hips is a novel of China and its struggle to overcome invasion, civil war, and the repercussions these events have on the people and the culture of China. At the same time it gives a voice to the people, allowing them to come to terms with their past.This is a fascinating work of political criticism and humanity.

Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Distributor: Hachette Book Group USA
Publication Date: 11-17-2004
Pages: 552
Measurements: 9.5in X 6.375in X 1.25in X 1.93lb