ABSTRACT
Voices of the wounds Many readers have noted that hunger figures prominently in Zhang Xianliang’s (b. 1936) novel Mimosa [Lü hua shu, 1983], while sexual impotence is an important theme in Zhang’s Half of Man Is Woman [Nanren de yiban shi nüren, 1985]. They attribute such suffering endured by the male protagonist Zhang Yonglin to the general political upheavals of the Mao era, blaming in particular the Cultural Revolution. Some readers find Zhang Xianliang’s representation of the “rightist” hero’s sexual impotence convincing, and generally sympathize with the hero. However, a great controversy stirred up with the publication of Half of Man involves critics’ argument over whether Zhang Yonglin was despicable and hypocritical in divorcing his wife, whether the author Zhang Xianliang overindulged himself in explicit sexual description and in treating the female protagonist as a sex object, and whether the novel exerted an immoral influence on society. Few critics have paid attention to the issue of psychological trauma, especially the chronic trauma resulting from the process of “remolding.”1
