Award-winning writer Yao Emei portrays the dark, brutally honest reality of women’s struggles in Chinese families, often due to men, in her latest short story collection, “The Unfilial”
“The men in our family are cursed,” recounts the unnamed narrator in the short story “It Runs in the Family,” explaining why her sister advised her to change her son’s name to something feminine.
“Ever since I was small, the men of this family have brought me nothing but shame, not a button’s worth of good,” Sister says. There’s Father, who was jailed for racketeering and ruined Sister’s relationship with her police officer boyfriend. Sister’s eventual husband lost his job when the factory went under, and can barely make ends meet. Her brilliant brother Pingzhi died young in a landslide, and her only son Zichen was admitted to a mental institution for killing his girlfriend.
Related Articles
