Gender, Class, and Capital: Female Migrant Workers’ Writing in Postsocialist China and Zheng Xiaoqiong’s Poetry

Abstract

This article takes Zheng Xiaoqiong’s poetry as an example and investigates Chinese New Women Workers’ writing under the postsocialist and neoliberal condition. It begins with a critical survey of the emerging discourse of New Workers’ Literature in China, followed by positioning Zheng’s depiction of female migrant workers’ dagong experience within the women’s question in contemporary China. I read Zheng’s writing from the combined perspectives of gender and class, investigating the way in which the sexuality of female migrant workers is remodeled or reproduced by capital and their labor. Finally, I explore how their labor, essentially governed by capitalist logic, contributes to their quagmires in developing sound gender identity and effective class consciousness. I argue that Zheng’s portrayal of female migrant workers resonates with the development of new workers and new conditions for women and helps to build a unique case representative of New Women Workers’ Literature in postsocialist China.