Between Tomboy Anxiety and the Cult of Girlishness: An Analysis of Gender Norms and Transgressions in China’s Post-socialist Children’s Literature

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: Focusing on novels of Yang Hongying and Cao Wenxuan, which are the most popular and widely recognized works of children’s literature in twenty-first century China, this paper explores normative gender performances and the anxiety of gender transgressions, both of which form binary gender with assigned gendered roles and performances in Chinese society. This paper argues that, vacillating between the nation’s dominant ideologies of stabilizing gender norms and sociocultural trends of liberating people’s bodies and minds, children’s literature in the post-socialist period presents tomboy anxiety and the cult of girlishness, which were widely accepted and carried out by Chinese people.

Type of resource	text
Date created	June 2019

Author	Cui,Yichao
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Stanford Global Studies, Center for East Asian Studies
Primary advisor	Lee, Haiyan

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/zv687df3870

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred Citation: Cui,Yichao. (2019). Between Tomboy Anxiety and the Cult of Girlishness: An Analysis of Gender Norms and Transgressions in China’s Post-socialist Children’s Literature. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/zv687df3870

Stanford Center for East Asian Studies Thesis Collection

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