Individualized Writing: Women Writers Blooming in China. The Art of Flying and Lin Bai

The pluralistic context of the 1990's has been fertile soil for the flourishing and blooming of a new and fresh literary tendency run by women. Some women writers, most born either late in the 1950's or at the very beginning of the 1960's, represent this original trend: Chen Ran 陈染 (born in Peking in 1962), Lin Bai 林白 (born in Guangxi Province in 1958), Hai Nan 海男 (born in Yunnan Province in 1962), and Xu Xiaobin 徐小斌 (born in Peking in 1953). They embody the core of the so-called ‘Individualized’ Writing (gerenhua xiezuo 个人化写作). However, other women writers can be placed, on the basis of some existing analogies, side by side with them, that is, Hong Ying 虹影 (born in 1962 in Chongqing), Xu Kun 徐坤 (born in 1965 in Liaoning Province), and Tie Ning 铁凝 (born in 1957 in Peking). This paper provides a survey and an analysis of the plentiful literary production of Lin Bai, ranging from fiction (including duanpian xiaoshuo 短篇小说, zhongpian xiaoshuo 中篇小说 and novels), to non-fiction (sanwen 散文 and suibi 随笔), as well as to poetry (Hai Nan and Lin Bai, alternating narrative works with poetic activity, particularly devote themselves to poetry)