Memoir of a Barefoot Doctor

This project introduces the memoir of Wang Xilan, a retired assistant physician in obstetrics and gynaecology who worked as a barefoot doctor in Huaiyang District, Henan Province, China from the 1950s to 1980s.

Using Wang’s memoir as a primary source, I examine autobiographical memories of Chinese medical workers from the Communist Liberation through the Cultural Revolution. I place those memories within the dominant cultural narratives and frameworks of that period, primarily suku, “speaking bitterness”.

I argue that although the narratives produced by the Communist Party-state permeated the ways in which Wang Xilan and other medical workers recount their experiences and urged them towards an expression of loyalty and labour in service of the Party-state’s progression towards social modernity, the tools of expression and organization taught by suku also empowered people—women in particular—to use their unique, individual “vernacular” memories for a variety of other purposes.