Women Poets
Women Poets articles and guides
Ban Zhao: Scholar, Historian, Poet — The Woman Who Finished China's Greatest History
When Ban Gu died in prison with the Book of Han unfinished, the emperor summoned his sister to complete it. Ban Zhao became the most influential female intellectual in Chinese history — and the most controversial.
The Banana Garden Poetry Club: When Women Took Over Chinese Poetry
In 17th-century China, a group of women formed their own poetry club, published their own anthologies, and proved that literary genius wasn't a male monopoly. The men were not entirely pleased.
Women Poets of China: The Voices That History Almost Silenced
For every Li Qingzhao who survived in the literary record, dozens of women poets were forgotten. The ones we know about wrote with a directness and emotional honesty that their male contemporaries often could not match.
Women Poets of China: The Voices That Were Almost Lost
Li Qingzhao, Xue Tao, Yu Xuanji — Chinese literary history includes extraordinary women poets whose work survived despite a culture that discouraged women from writing. Their survival is itself a story.
Zhuo Wenjun: The Woman Who Wrote Her Own Love Story
In 150 BCE, a young widow heard a man play the qin, eloped with him that night, and then wrote a poem that saved her marriage when he tried to take a concubine. Zhuo Wenjun played by nobody's rules.