He-Yin Zhen: Rediscovered Chinese Anarcha-Feminist Writer Gets Italian Translation

The Italian publisher D Editore has released 'Il tuono dell'anarchia' (The Thunder of Anarchy), the first Italian translation of writings by He-Yin Zhen, a Chinese anarcha-feminist writer active between the 19th and 20th centuries. He-Yin Zhen lived among Chinese anarchist circles in Tokyo and is believed to have died in 1920 at age 33. Her works, largely forgotten outside academia, argue that women's liberation is essential to societal revolution, rejecting mere suffrage as insufficient. The volume was curated and translated by sinologist Cristina Manzone, who notes parallels between He-Yin Zhen's thought and later feminists like Silvia Federici, Simone de Beauvoir, Emma Goldman, and Virginia Woolf. He-Yin Zhen criticized Confucianism for perpetuating gender and class inequalities, and advocated for a complete overthrow of systemic power structures, including the state. She also expressed concern that women ascending to power might create new hierarchies, a stance consistent with anarchist opposition to state oppression. On prostitution, she condemned it as an extension of women being treated as private property, contextualized within the legitimacy of concubinage in her era. The book is priced at €21.90.