Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman

The harsh, restrictive lives of poor Chinese women from the late 19th Century to the Japanese occupation of Peking in 1938 comes to life in the true story of Ning Lao Ta'I-ta'I, translated and transcribed by American Ida Pruitt from an oral memoir, A Daughter of Han: Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman. As Pruitt cites in the book's Preface, Ning Lao came to her home in China three times a week for two years "and told me many tales and of many customs and to illustrate these customs she told me more tales until the story of her life lay before me" (p. 1). The book contains valuable, first-hand insights into social, political, religious and gender issues during the traditional time in which Ning Lao lived, the end of the Qing Dynasty.

By the book's final chapters, signs of the new China emerge in the form of Communist guerillas fighting the Japanese, and Ning Lao's granddaughter who symbolizes the new life for Chinese women, a life that offers women a career, the opportunity to work toward one's ideals, and no urgent need to marry and procreate; in other words, unlike Ning Lao, her granddaughter had the freedom to choose her destiny. Ning Lao on the other hand never had such freedom, or perhaps even wanted it. She emerges as the obedient, traditional Chinese woman who believes that "family is more important than anything else" (p. 239). The theme of the common, proscribed destiny of Chinese women is echoed throughout the book by Ning Lao who insists on the importance o

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