Berry Michael (ed.) A history of pain: trauma in Modern Chinese literature and film

New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. — xii, 420 p.: ill. — (Global Chinese Culture) — ISBN: 9780231512008.This study surveys how historical violence and atrocity have been presented, represented, and projected in contemporary Chinese cultural texts and explores what these repre sen ta tions tell us about history, memory, and the shifting status of national identity. What do these cultural portrayals of mass violence contribute to our understanding of ideas of modernity and the nation? How does mass population movement, which is so often intertwined with violence, affect the way we remember, reconfi gure, and represent atrocity? What is the relationship between historical atrocity on a national scale and the pain experienced by the individual victims? What is the effectiveness of fi lm and literature as historical testimony? And how do these media allow us to approach the phantom that is “history” in ways that traditional historical scholarship cannot?