The Audible beyond the Visible: Memory, Creativity and Subjectivity of women’s Narratives in Nüshu Songs

The Chinese women’s script and gender-specific oral literature known as nüshu have attracted scholarly attention as they neared extinction. Previous anthologies and studies were primarily focused on texts from the last surviving natural nüshu transmitters, within a cultural and personal context. This research demonstrates that the originally hybrid written-and-orally transmitted nüshu culture expanded to include a broader group of practitioners, many of whom possessed limited or no literacy in the nüshu script. A field study conducted in Jiangyong and Dao counties in southern Hunan documented the practice and preservation of nüshu among rural women, primarily through oral transmission. The women’s social practices in the Jiangyong region have created a niche of female culture that has produced some original folk literature genres, as well as repurposed existing genres of Chinese official and folk literature from a women’s perspective. The study also examines the relationship between “visible” and “audible” literary norms within nüshu culture, contrasting these with mainstream discourse beyond the nüshu milieu from late imperial China until the second half of the twentieth century, when the use of women’s script declined. Today, although nüshu songs are still maintained by the older generation, the traditional communicative, social, and cultural practices involving written nüshu have become extinct. The current official revitalization and promotion of nüshu heritage have prioritized nüshu script calligraphy and a limited selection of the most common nüge and nüshu songs, decontextualized and aimed to reach broader audiences. The autobiographical genre of expressing grievances through formulaic, versified songs has been a widespread creative practice for women within the traditional nüshu culture community, even among those with limited script literacy. The study also presents Chinese and English translations of previously unpublished original nüshu songs, collected in situ in Jiangyong rural communities. These autobiographical narratives amplify the voices of authors with limited literacy who were underrepresented in former nüshu collections and reveal the role of traditional cultural contexts in their creativity.