Years of Sadness: Selected Autobiographical Writings of Wang Anyi

This anthology focuses on autobiographical works by Wang Anyi, the most prolific and critically acclaimed woman writer in contemporary China, highlighting a personal and emotional dimension of her writing that is essential to a deeper understanding of her creativity and productivity. The three pieces selected for this volume—"A Woman Writer's Sense of Self, " "Utopian Verses, " and "Years of Sadness"—explore some of the most fundamental and complex issues concerning Wang's identity as a woman and as a writer in early post-socialist China, the creative and emotional challenges she faced during her sojourn in the United States in the early 1980s, and her memories of adolescent years, a period of obsession, uncertainty, and loneliness during the Cultural Revolution.