"Dorothy Ko's daring in taking on the difficult subject of footbinding has resulted in a tour-de-force. In "Cinderella's Sisters" she rises above nationalist, feminist, and Orientalist polemic to place footbinding clearly in the domain of the history of fashion. Her ingenious narrative strategy--putting the modern story of foobinding's disappearance at the beginning--sets up her historical account of its premodern heyday as a story of concealment--of hidden sources, hidden bodies, and hidden meanings. As illusion, ...
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"Dorothy Ko's daring in taking on the difficult subject of footbinding has resulted in a tour-de-force. In "Cinderella's Sisters" she rises above nationalist, feminist, and Orientalist polemic to place footbinding clearly in the domain of the history of fashion. Her ingenious narrative strategy--putting the modern story of foobinding's disappearance at the beginning--sets up her historical account of its premodern heyday as a story of concealment--of hidden sources, hidden bodies, and hidden meanings. As illusion, footbinding reveals women's sisterhood in responses to being objects of desire."--Charlotte Furth, author of "A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China's Medical History: 960-1665" ""Cinderella's Sister's" is the long-awaited, definitive work on Chinese footbinding in English.The work also plugs into current concerns with the history of the body and of fashion. But it also does much more: at every turn it tells us something new about late imperial and republican-era Chinese society and history. It is remarkably rich in fascinating detail. A great read."--William T. Rowe, author of "Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century China"
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