Abstract
A literary study likening Emily Dickinson's upbringing, education, and lifestyle choices and resulting uniquely characteristic brand of poetry to the Chinese yin/yang principle of non-opposing opposites.

From the Paper
"Emily Dickinson, considered by literary critics, scholars and lay persons alike to be alongside Walt Whitman, one of the two poets most instrumental in defining modern American poetry, created verse characteristically unique in style, meter imagery and punctuation, because she was raised in and chose to live her life in a permanent state of what Chinese philosophers term the yin yang-a state of productive balance born of opposite mutually-dependent but non-opposing forces."

Tags:yin/yang, Dickinson, poetry

Abstract
This paper takes a look at Rae Yang's "The Spider Eaters - a Memoir", a book addressing the Cultural Revolution from the perspective of a person who was caught up in a frightening time in the early People's Republic of China (PRC).The paper considers the book a disturbing reflection on the youth of the Red Guard and the vicious sort of fascism created by Chairman Mao. It concludes that the book is well written and informative.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Maoism and Youth
Divisions
Conclusion

From the Paper
"Yang writes in a way that is immediate and also indicating that her days in the Red Guard were far away, a dream somehow, and as much of the volume moves back and forth between the present and the past and with anecdotes to do with her childhood and family adding to a surreal and very personal explanation of a frightening time and different people's reactions to it. A chapter "A Strange Gift from the Pig Farm" refers to her habit of waking at 3 a.m. that remained after she was placed in the Manchurian countryside just as millions of other young people to finish high school were sent for menial labour away from the cities. She had had to waken at 3 a.m. to perform part of her assigned work and the habit remained, years later. (pp. 1-2) So much forgetting a disturbing time, or the person she had become, as 3 a.m. waking in America showed that some things could not be washed away. The inability to reconcile what Maoism preached, what happened, and came into view as very wrong with the CCP movement produced despair later and a wish to die which took time to overcome. Rae Yang embarked on graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts. She graduated from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1981 and in the U.S., completed her M.A. in 1985 and her Ph.D. in 1991, obtaining a post at Dickinson College where she specializes in pre-modern and modern Chinese literature."

Tags:China cultural revolution communism Chinese, red army, red guard mao maoism

Abstract
The paper discusses how the day of Mencius was one of turbulence that made many push away from Confucian thought, aware that the day of sage-rulers was over. The paper describes how corruption and violence made the refomist ideas of Yang Zhu's individualism and Mozi's love of all humanity appealing. The paper shows, however, how Mencius criticized both, believing that Confucianism held the answers for precisely such a time of disorder.

From the Paper
"The reformers Yang Zhu and Mozi emerged from a period of social decay in China, the day of the sage emperors over and the country featuring many contesting feudal lords, the scholarly class falling into decadence, its members often quite idle. Under such circumstances people were not likely to see the philosophy of Confucius as very relevant and numbers came to be influenced by Yang Zhu and Mozi who offered strong departures from what had gone before. Mencius, however, held true to the teachings of Confucius that he seemed to see as a kind of rudder whatever the unwanted events in..."

Tags:mencius, yang zhu, mozi

Abstract
This paper analyzes how various representations of light and dark in Aeschylus's "Agamemnon", part of the "Oresteia", seem to mirror masculinity and femininity, respectively. It explains how these images also show how the play is mostly about how the female attempts to usurp male power, ultimately achieving it. Nevertheless, because there can never be absolute darkness or absolute light, the overthrow of the male can only be temporary.

From the Paper
"In Aeschylus's Agamemnon, the use of light and dark revolves around their relation to the masculine and the feminine, respectively. Throughout the play, brilliant metaphors and images are used to express this idea, most obviously when related to Agamemnon and Clytaemestra. These images also show how the play is mostly about how the female attempts to usurp male power, ultimately achieving it. Nevertheless, because there can never be absolute darkness or absolute light, the overthrow of the male can only be temporary."

Tags:clytaemestra, clytemnestra, greek, mythology, orestia, symbolism, tragedy

From the Paper
"The concepts of Yin and Yang in Chinese philosophy are complex and difficult to grasp, and they are said to be indefinable in the strictest sense because they are such all-embracing conceptions. The terms are used to refer to the two complementary creative forces in nature. Yin is female and is thought to be passive, negative, dark, cold, soft, and wet; yang is male and is thought to be active, positive, light, hot, hard, and dry. The terms "positive" and "negative" in this instance do not have the meaning of good or bad or desirable and undesirable; instead, they are used in the same general sense that physicists use the terms to refer to the positive or negative electrical charges of particles. Yin and yang together symbolize the eternal and profound duality in nature. They are opposites, but they counterbalance and complement each other (Wu 157)."

Abstract
This paper reviews and analyzes Rae Yang's account of Mao's Cultural Revolution as told in the work "The Spider Eaters." According to the paper, this book tells us of the PRC in a most dangerous day. Yang came of an elite background yet joined the Red Guard towards guilt as to what she and others did, realizations coming later as to what Mao's movement really achieved in inflicted cruelty. Additionally,the books cites Yang's account of the strange stark world of fear, the ethos of selflessness that made people docile and all else she came to reject, and reject in herself.

From the Paper
"Rae Yang's memoir is the story of a classless person, in the sense of having spanned several Chinese social classes, a person who came of age during the Cultural Revolution and who obviously worked hard to present her experiences in the direct, even raw emotional account that most readers will explore, cover to cover. It is a very compelling book. Yang's parents had been diplomats in Switzerland and she later attended an elite school in Beijing, her family and friends people able to surmise what went on around them, sometimes objecting, their connections excellent but in the changing atmosphere of Mao's cultivated `peasant revolution' of..."

Tags:yang, spider eaters, review

Abstract
This paper gives a critical review of Rae Yang's memoir "The Spider Eaters." According to the paper, this work is in some ways typical of much literature addressing events during the Cultural Revolution. The author was a member of a generation consumed by youth brigades and the Red Guards at the same time as the Cultural Revolution harmed her family. She described the conflicts of ideology and humanity years later, as a professor of Chinese literature in the U.S.

From the Paper
" Rae Yang's volume addressing the Cultural Revolution is part of a range of offerings by different persons caught up in a frightening time in the early People's Republic of China (PRC). To a degree, works such as The Spider Eaters feed a Western market of people curious as to what did occur in the PRC between 1966 and 1976, a time of isolation from the West but known incidents of extreme repression. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) featured divided social groups in technocrats and educated persons charged with administering the new state, before Mao's effort to prop himself up..."

Tags:yang rae, spider eaters, prc, cult rev

Abstract
This paper discusses Rae Yang's memoir - "The Spider Eaters". The paper explains that the books is the story of a classless person who came of age during the Cultural Revolution and who obviously worked hard to present her experiences in a direct and emotional manner. The paper explains that Yang's volume covers the decades between 1950 and 1980 and clearly illustrates the cruelty that Yang came to see all around her though a committed communist and Red Guard. The paper also shows how Yang's memoir points to Mao as a very aware person, a megalomaniac in Communist clothing who had no care as to the degree of cruelty that was inflicted through an entire society, or how this experience might shape future Chinese society and politics. In conclusion, the paper shows that Mao and the Chinese Cultural Revolution destroyed the Chinese who might have had much to offer the socialist experiment, drove great wedges between people and accustomed the Chinese once again to conditions of great fear.

From the Paper
"Mao's regime could be, just as the Red Guard she came to recognize as brutal, a movement quickly dissolving into anarchy, a kind of gang warfare, till the Red Army intervened. This is an interesting revelation given that one is so often instructed that Mao was not aware of the abuses inflicted on many Chinese during the Cultural Revolution, that the Red Army had somehow taken over or carried out what he had not intended. Yang's memoir points to Mao as a very aware person, a megalomaniac in Communist clothing who had no care as to the degree of cruelty that was inflicted through an entire society, or how this experience might shape future Chinese society and politics. Yang's volume covers the decades between 1950 and her 1980. Shortly after, Yang left for the United States where she made her career."

Tags:Chinese, Cultural, Revolution, Mao, Communist, Red, Guard

Abstract
This paper provides an overview of Rae Yang's "Spider Eaters," a political and social memoir of the life of a young Chinese woman during the Chinese cultural revolution. The paper shows that Yang's memoir is of her youth torn between two worlds, that of her loyalty to the Communist Party, and that of her parents and friends.

From the Paper
"The narrative technique utilized in the book is that of first person. Continuously moving from past to present and from dream to reality this technique helps to convey the vast complexity of life in China, as well as the richness, confusion, and struggle of Yang's inner-self. For example, her dreams act as a soliloquy as they illustrate to the reader Yang's conflicted feelings as it shows her naive and tormented side."

Tags:Red, Guard, revolution

Abstract
This paper examines poems about women, which reflect the culture of humankind and its history from the Tang dynasty, and yet, also reflect life today. The author points out that, in the five-character verse poem, "To My Daughter on Her Marriage into the Yang Family", by author Wei Yingwu, the girl in the poem may have left for her new marriage by boat instead of by limousine, but the love that the father feels for his daughter shares the same bittersweet emotions of any parent when the wedding couple says their vows in 2004.The paper relates that the poem, "Endless Yearning II", by Li Bai (701-762), with its folk-song-stylized verses could be a love song put to music by one of the present musical artists and understood by audiences of all ages.

Table of Contents
To My Daughter on Her Marriage into the Yang Family
Endless Yearning II

From the Paper
"The author expresses the realities of life on earth with its pain and burdens. However, he also waits for his turn to be on the other side or paradise with his love, in the mountain wind and blue skies so far above. He hopes that his love can reach up to her, and his tears convince her of the aching of his heart. However, when reflecting on these clear yet complex words, one understands that there is much more beyond the simple telling of a love song hints and innuendos and insights into other depths of meaning. On a deeper level, like many poets during the Tang period, the storyteller yearns for a distant and boundless heaven that appears in another dimension and awaits an individual's death."

Tags:father, realities, complex, storyteller, song