Literary and Documentary Accounts of the Great Famine
Literary and Documentary Accounts of the Great Famine
Challenging the Political System and the Social Hierarchies of Memory
Literary publications have long been a useful channel for intellectuals to voice critiques of the Mao era. This chapter examines three works of investigation, reportage and fiction published in the 2000s, to argue that counter-hegemonic narratives are gaining wider public circulation in China, and have contributed to questioning the official account, according to which elites and intellectuals were the main victims of Mao’s state. Yang Xianhui’s Chronicles of Jiabiangou documents the persecution of ordinary “rightists” in the provinces, Yang Jisheng’s Tombstone links the famine to the nature of the PRC regime, and Yan Lianke’s Four Books pinpoints the complicity of intellectuals with state policies. They have to some extent opened a space for further public debate on early PRC history.
Keywords: Literature, Reportage, Great Famine, Subaltern history, Public sphere
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