Ida Pruitt (1888–1985)
Autor von A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman
Werke von Ida Pruitt
Getagged
Wissenswertes
- Geburtstag
- 1888
- Todestag
- 1985-07-24
- Geschlecht
- female
- Nationalität
- China
USA - Geburtsort
- Penglai, China
- Ausbildung
- Cox College
Columbia University Teachers' College (BS|1910)
Mitglieder
Rezensionen
Listen
Auszeichnungen
Dir gefällt vielleicht auch
Nahestehende Autoren
Statistikseite
- Werke
- 3
- Mitglieder
- 237
- Beliebtheit
- #95,614
- Bewertung
- 3.6
- Rezensionen
- 4
- ISBNs
- 14
- Sprachen
- 1
"A Daughter of Han" is both an insightful and a frustrating read. The author, Ida Pruitt, writes in the first-person from the perspective of Lao T'ai-t'ai, a woman Pruitt met and interviewed. There are several interesting themes in the book: conservative society, saving face, foreign missionaries, poverty, numerology, and domestic life.
Each chapter presents a few years in Lao T'ai-t'ai's life. She describes her childhood, her marriage to an "opium sot," her husband trying to sell her daughters, and her working life. Lao T'ai-t'ai's life is terribly difficult. She and her children go through periods of hunger that force them onto the street. She sees children and grandchildren die, which Pruitt barely mentions in passing.
Unfortunately, the book is somewhat scant on specifics and details. At various times she works as a domestic servant for a Muslim family, a mandarin bureaucrat, and different missionaries, but we never learn how exactly she serves the families or how she makes house-calls as an itinerant vendor. In addition, events just come and go with very little reflection or detail, such as deaths in her family or friends that she mentions with no specifics. I would be curious to know about how funerals were held, what she did with her friends, or even what the cities she lived in were like.
Sometimes, the scant details work in favor of the narrative. For instance, there is a brief sentence that describes seeing some of supporters of the Boxer Rebellion in her city. For her, a woman more interested in getting by than paying attention to politics, this would be a realistic description.
The narrative style is a little dated, even for a book written in the ‘30s or ‘40s. Even given the local idioms that Pruitt mixes in for color, the writing is a bit halting. There are interruptions and odd interjections that make reading this book very clumsy.
Nevertheless, there is very little biographic writing about the lives of ordinary people from this time. This alone makes "Daughter of Han" important for students of history and society.… (mehr)