ABSTRACT
One of the most promising new talents to emerge on the poetic scene in the eighties, Zhai Yongming was born in Chengdu, Sichuan. Zhai is best known for her poems about women, a number of which are included here. One translator/critic, Andrea Lingenfelter, has made the following remarks about her twenty-poem cycle 'Women': what Chai/Zhai asserts here is her imperative to write from her own singular and unique point of view. This individuality is grounded in her psychosexual and socio-cultural awareness of herself as a woman. Nonetheless, Chai/Zhai does not claim to speak for all women, although judging by the impact that 'Woman' made on other Chinese women poets, a number of them thought that she did speak for them. Her book of poems, The Poetry of Zhai Yongming, was published in 1994. Andrea Lingenfelter, 'A Marked Category: Nine Women of Modern Chinese Literature', unpublished PhD. dissertation.
