Books & Spoken Word
Leta Hong Fincher – Betraying Big Brother
Leta Hong Fincher introduces her new book, Betraying Big Brother: the Feminist Awakening in China.
On the eve of International Women’s Day in 2015, the Chinese government arrested five feminist activists and jailed them for 37 days. The Feminist Five became a global cause célèbre, with activists inundating social media with #FreetheFive messages. But the Feminist Five are symbols of a much larger feminist movement of civil rights lawyers, labour activists, performances arists and online warriors that is prompting an unprecedented awakening among China’s urban, educated women.
Leta Hong Fincher illuminates both the challenges they face and their “joy of betraying Big Brother” as Wei Ting – one of the Feminist Five – wrote of the defiance she felt during her detention. Tracing the rise of a new feminist consciousness through online campaigns resembling #MeToo, and describing how the Communist regime has suppressed the history of its own feminist struggles, Hong Fincher tells the story of how the movement against patriarchy could reconfigure China and the world.
is needed now More than ever
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