"[
Comfort Women] aims to advance the ongoing legal action against Japan, in which redress is sought for the sufferings of those affected by the comfort women system. As such it is a polemic–but such is the tragedy of the women's experience that one overlooks any partisanship. It is also rigorous–scrupulously researched and demonstrating the highest academic integrity."–
Asian Review of Books"This vital work, combining exemplary scholarship and humanitarian activism, should prove valuable to a wide audience and indispensable to specialists."–
Publishers Weekly"'Chinese Comfort Women, ' by Peipei Qiu, a professor at Vassar College, and two China-based co-authors, Su Zhiliang and Chen Lifei, sheds new light on this tragedy with heartbreaking profiles of 12 Chinese comfort women."–
Wall Street Journal"
Chinese Comfort Women is significant in several ways. It provides the first English-language testimony, from twelve ordinary Chinese women, about the sexual enslavement of Chinese women during the war...Finally the book asks why these women did not receive justice under either socialist or neoliberal China in the years following the war. Highlighting the brutality of Japanese rapists, the book links Chinese patriarchal institutions and Japanese military masculinity. Examining the connection can help us to understand how and why women were treated as commodities: sold, bought, and tortured at the hands of both Chinese and Japanese men."–
Women's Review of Books"[Qiu, Zhiliang, and Lifei] carefully explain the complexity of the story in a nuanced and sensitive way...The nature of the subject makes this groundbreaking scholarly account of interest to informed laypersons seeking to learn about military history, World War II, and the sexual exploitation of women."–
Library Journal"The keen attention the authors paid to the notion of gender and sexuality in wartime and postwar Chinese sociopolitical systems makes this book not only and interrogation of war crimes committed by Japanese troops but also a critical reflection on the injustice to women perpetuated by local patriarchal society and masculine-nationalist history writing. This well-researched, well-structured book is indispensable for teaching modern East Asian history and politics and for rethinking organized violence."–
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