Dangerous pleasure

Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai

This book, which transcends the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction to restore and imaginatively reconstruct the prostitution industry in 20th-century Shanghai, won the American Historical Association's Joan Kelly Prize for Women's History.
In 20th-century Shanghai, prostitution was understood in various ways: as a source of pleasure, danger, shamelessness, a painful economic choice, and a symbol of national decline. Prostitution was not only a place where women earned a living but also a metaphor, a medium for expressing their thoughts and emotions. "Dangerous Pleasures" is a historical account of prostitution in 20th-century Shanghai. Beyond tracing and combing through historical sources, the author creatively reconstructs that history, transcending the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. She re-situates prostitutes, often mute, within various historical contexts, exploring their influences and revealing how sex was used as a medium to engage in discussions about political power, cultural transformation, national identity, and cultural belonging.
Dangerous Pleasures won the American Historical Association's Joan Kelly Memorial Award for Women's History. This was the first time the American Historical Association gave this award to a work about women's history outside the United States.
Celebrity recommendation:
With its vast archive of documentary material and its narrative rich in thought and originality, this is an important book... a rich and courageous one.
Fei Xiali He Xiao offers a prime example of using a single subject as a window through which to experience and interpret the cognitive, political, social, and economic history of a particular place. Her historical and theoretical approach is challenging and forward-thinking. This book is captivating, complex, and highly readable.
— Lenore Manderson This book recreates the history of prostitution in Shanghai in rich and intricate detail. It demonstrates how crucial the issue of prostitution was to the social and political history of the period and offers a model for writing a specific history that explores and details its roots.
——Joan Wallach Scott I would like to thank He Xiao for her book for depicting the past of Chinese sex workers and for providing us with a feminist perspective for understanding and dealing with new problems in the new situation.
——Li Yinhe

2022-05-01

江苏人民出版社

Think Tank

696

9787214268921