About this Event
About the Book:
Leta Hong Fincher's landmark book Leftover Women shone a light on the resurgence of gender inequality in 21st-century China. Ten years on, women in China continue to experience a dramatic rolling back of rights and gains in the increasingly patriarchal political climate of the Xi Jinping era. Leftover Women explores the structural discrimination against women and the broader problems with China's economy, politics, and development that lie behind it. This updated edition includes a new preface exploring developments in China in the 10 years since the book's original publication, including the new "three child policy", the growth in online feminist and LGBTQ activism and the state's increasingly repressive moves against dissent.
About the Author:
Leta Hong Fincher has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Dissent Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar and others. As a long-time TV and radio journalist based in China, she won the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award, the Cowan Award for Humanitarian Reporting and other journalism honors for her reporting. The 10th anniversary edition of Leta's first book, Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China (2023), was named one of the best books of 2023 by China Books Review. Leta’s second book, Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China, was named one of the best books of the year by Vanity Fair, Newsweek, Foreign Policy Interrupted, Bitch Media and Autostraddle; it was also a New York Times “New and Noteworthy” pick. The New York Public Library named Betraying Big Brother one of its “essential reads on feminism” in 2020.
Leta is the first American to receive a Ph.D. from Tsinghua University's Department of Sociology in Beijing. She graduated from Harvard University magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in East Asian Languages and Civilizations and won a Harvard Foundation award for contribution to race relations. She was awarded a Shaw fellowship and Walter Shorenstein fellowship for her master's degree in East Asian Studies from Stanford University. She is currently a Research Associate at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.
About the Moderator:
Dorinda (Dinda) Elliott is Executive Director of the Harvard University Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and the Harvard China Fund. She previously served as SVP, Director of Programs, at the China Institute in New York, where she ran public and private arts and culture and business-related programming, including the annual Executive Summit. Before joining China Institute, Elliott worked as Editorial and Communications Director at the Paulson Institute, founded by Hank Paulson, which promotes U.S.-China relations and sustainable growth in both countries.
Prior to those roles, Elliott worked as a foreign correspondent and editor for Newsweek, Time, Asiaweek, and Conde Nast Traveler. Before becoming Asia editor for Newsweek, Elliott spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent, based in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Moscow, covering China, Southeast Asia, and Russia. She served as editor in chief of Asiaweek magazine, based in Hong Kong. Among other stories, Elliott covered China’s opening up and the student movement in the late 1980s; the rise of the mafia and political and economic transition in Post-Soviet Russia; the fall of Suharto in Indonesia; the reformasi movement in Malaysia; Hong Kong’s handover to Chinese sovereignty in 1997; and China’s rise as an economic power.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Beacon Hill Books & Cafe, 71 Charles Street, Boston, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 25.00