Years of Sadness

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.