Book Talk with Esther Hu, Author:   Soong Mayling and Wartime China, 1937-1945: Deploying Words as Weapons

This talk provides an overview of Soong Mayling and Wartime China, 1937-1945: Deploying Words as Weapons (Rowman & Littlefield/Bloomsbury 2025), a new book on China's former First Lady, Soong Mayling (also known as Madame Chiang Kai-shek). It examines her timely and critical contributions in the areas of war, women's work, and diplomacy during China's War of Resistance against Japan (1937- 1945) through a gender lens. Esther Hu (PhD Cornell) is a feminist literary scholar and historian who joined Boston University in 2005. She is a Senior Fellow at the International History Institute and Affiliated Faculty of the Center for the Study of Asia at BU Pardee School, and an Associate in Research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. Dr. Hu has published many essays, book reviews, and encyclopedia entries and is the English translator of Soong Mayling's Chinese-language pictorial biography, A Legacy of Grace and Resilience: Soong Mayling and her Era (2023; 2nd Ed. 2024). Free and open to the public. Please register at https://bostonu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1X4EEasgq61v2zs.