I'll begin by stating what is usually left to the last paragraph: The Gender of Memory should be on the syllabi for any and all courses dealing with China in the 1950s and 1960s, the history of Chinese women in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, historical methodology, and the social origins of China's post-Mao reforms. Based on interviews with 72 elderly women in several villages in central and south Shaanxi Province, and in-depth research in provincial and county archives and local gazetteers between 1996–2006, Gail Hershatter, in collaboration with Gao Xiaoxian, a senior Women's Federation official, politely demolishes any remaining vestiges of the stock images associated with the terms “rural women” and “the Chinese family”; unearths fascinating data about rural life beyond and in-between the “mind numbing list” (p. 3) of political campaigns (what she calls “campaign time”; p. 4); tells us, in intricate detail, what the Communist revolution,...

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