Plum Shadows and Plank Bridge

Keith McMahon, Kansas University:
These memoirs are unique in world literature. The courtesans at the center of these pieces were masters of literati culture, and around them gathered some of the most famous literati in a time of impending doom. Wai-yee Li’s translations are accurate, well-annotated, and read smoothly. Few scholars can match her understanding of the language of these texts, which deserve to be read by a wide audience.

Andrew Schoenbaum, University of Maryland:
The translation is masterful. Wai-yee Li is most assuredly one of the world’s foremost experts on this subject and does an exemplary job of maintaining each text’s distinctive voices and overall tone. These works are good reads, hugely influential and valuable, and contrasting examples of an important genre heretofore scantly represented and poorly understood in the English-speaking world.

Judith Zeitlin, University of Chicago:
Wai-yee Li’s translations of these famous Chinese memoirs of romantic brio and pathos from the seventeenth century are a marvel of precision, elegance, and wit—a perfect match for the book’s sensual, tragic contents. Her brilliant annotations and supplemental translations help unlock a whole lost historical world of incomparable richness.