Moe Girls: From Resistance and Revolution to Feminine Empowerment

"People only see the past, not the future; pioneers do not know themselves."

In 1972, amidst the fervor of student and women's movements, British historian Sheila Rowbotham published her seminal work, Women, Resistance and Revolution: A History of Women and Revolution in the Modern World. This book analyzed the contributions and predicaments of women in social movements such as the French Revolution, the American abolitionist movement, and colonial independence, becoming a recognized classic of feminism.

Under the tutelage of renowned historians Edward and Dorothy Thompson, Rowbotham traced the formation of the collective "woman" with a "history from below" perspective, promoting consciousness-raising: "Women's liberation must entail human liberation." Many more stories remain untold, and feminism as a possibility is ubiquitous—the future has arrived, it's just not widely known—women's history is bound to be the result of future human collaboration. Fifty years after its publication, this work has been translated into Chinese for the first time, in hopes of ushering in a new beginning for feminist discourse in the Chinese-speaking world—this is "Nü Méng" (Female Awakening).