The Talented Women of the Zhang Family Book

This was a book that I wrote a paper on for my class on Early Modern East Asia. I found Mann's writing to be very engaging and digestible, which for me, is integral to reading works of history. This is because although I personally am studying history, many are kept from engaging with history because often works are written in a manner that seem elitist and make it hard for many to delve into. This is not something that I found with Mann's work, as hers was interactive and conveyed in a narrative-like manner that did not make it difficult to get through. Her work itself discusses the experiences of the women of the Zhang family during nineteenth century China, a period which was characteristically chaotic as these women lived through a century in which the Taiping Rebellion, the Opium Wars, and the incursion of the Japanese all occurred simultaneously with the dynastic decline of the Qing. She explores what it was like and meant to be an educated and elite woman during the chaos and how society received the intellectual and artistic efforts of these women. Overall, it is an amazing work that explores a part of history not often discussed or even given much thought. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in Chinese or women's history, or anyone interested in reading a historical work that is engaging and informative.