Ding Ling and "Cattle Shed"

• Born


  October 12, 1904
• Died


  March 4, 1986
• Born as


  Jiang Bingzhi (Chiang Pinchin)
• Refused to marry cousin who was her chosen husband
• Joined the communist party

  1932
• Husband (Hu Yepin), an impoverished worker, poet was executed in jail by the Kuomintang
• Well known as the author of

  "Miss Sophie's Diary" (1928), a story about a young women and her sexual feelings
• Placed under house arrest by the kuomintang in Shanghai for 3 years


  1933-1936
• Suffered harsher treatment after the defeat of Chiang Kai - Shek's Nationalist government because of shifting communist politics
• Denounced as a "Rightist" and her work was banned


  1957
• Spent 5 years in jail during the cultural revolution and was sentence do manual labor on a farm for 12 years before being rehabilitated in 1978


  1957-1962
• Influenced by Western literature
• In 1957, She found consolation in reading latin American and African Literature
• Guest at the University of Iowa's International Writing program
• Authored more than 300 works
• Some of her banned novels like The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River (1984) were republished and translated into many languages
• Some of her works over the 50 year period are collected in I Myself Am a Woman: Selected writings of Ding Ling (Beacon Press, 1989)
• What is the point of view?

  1st person
• What is the setting

  prison
• How long was the speaker in jail

  10 months
• Where specifically is the speaker at

  solitary confinement
• Who is her warder?

  Tao Yun
• What type of cleaning are they doing

  major clean up and going to sleep up the square outside the window
• What type of beds were there?

  brick beds
• How many sections are there in the story

  3
• who is she adressing when she says "we"


  her and her husband
• How long has she been married

  about 30 years<
• What were the brooms made out of

  bamboo
• How often did she see her husband

  3 times a day
• What did the prisoners have to do before they got food

  stand in a long line mutter political incantations and confess their errors
• Where did the prisoners go back to after they were got their food?

  cattle shed
• Who got the speakers food

  Tao Sun because she had no right to get it herself
• Who was the warden with?

  rebel soldiers
• Why doesn't she acknowledge him anymore

  they make take them away from each other all the time or could kill them
• How was the speakers relationship with Tao Yun in the beginning

  She was sympathetic towards the speaker and found ways to giver her protection, urge the speaker to eat more and buy her good food
• Who came from Beijing

  people under the signboard of the Military Control Commission and interrogated the speaker day and night
• What was Tao Yun relationship with the speaker after the people from Beijing

  she had hatred towards her and kept her locked in a room w/ heavy surveillance
• What can't Tao Yun do

  read, she was illiterate
• What did Tao Yun take from the speaker


  paper + ballpoint pen
• What was her house out of jail

  7 meter squared thatched room