Betraying Big Brother, Leta Hong Fincher
Betraying Big Brother, Leta Hong Fincher
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
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Betraying Big Brother
The Feminist Awakening in China

Author: Leta Hong Fincher

Narrator: Emily Woo Zeller

Unabridged: 7 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/24/2019


Synopsis

A feminist movement clashing with China's authoritarian government

On the eve of International Women's Day in 2015, the Chinese government arrested five feminist activists and jailed them for thirty-seven days. The Feminist Five became a global cause célèbre, with Hillary Clinton speaking out on their behalf and activists inundating social media with #FreetheFive messages. But the Five are only symbols of a much larger feminist movement of civil rights lawyers, labor activists, performance artists, and online warriors prompting an unprecedented awakening among China's educated, urban women. In Betraying Big Brother, journalist and scholar Leta Hong Fincher argues that the popular, broad-based movement poses the greatest challenge to China's authoritarian regime today.

Through interviews with the Feminist Five and other leading Chinese activists, Hong Fincher illuminates both the difficulties they face and their "joy of betraying Big Brother," as one of the Feminist Five wrote of the defiance she felt during her detention. Tracing the rise of a new feminist consciousness now finding expression through the #MeToo movement, and describing how the Communist regime has suppressed the history of its own feminist struggles, Betraying Big Brother is a story of how the movement against patriarchy could reconfigure China and the world.

About Leta Hong Fincher

Leta Hong Fincher is a journalist and scholar who has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Ms. Magazine, the BBC, and CNN. She is the author of Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Soraya on November 24, 2018

Betraying Big Brother is an essential read for anyone interested in women's rights democracy, politics and the global resurgence of women's activism. The cross-currents of change in China documented by Leta Hong Fincher here are important to understand in almost any context. So grateful for this boo......more

Goodreads review by Laura on August 03, 2022

This was incredibly well researched and presented in an interesting and engaging way. Kind of a random five star, but I found it captivating. Probably helps that I have an MA in China Studies and I lived in Beijing for a couple years. China is wild man. More power to these women paving the way!......more