Broken Wings

"Broken Wings tells the story of Butterfly, who is kidnapped and taken to a remote mountain village devoid of young women. There, she is imprisoned and, later, raped in the cave home of the wifeless farmer who has bought her. Butterfly’s fading hopes of escape are described in her own voice, revealing the struggles of a spirited young woman. In 2022, a news story from China was so loud, it couldn’t be confined to local or even national outcry. A woman in her 40s was found chained by her neck in an outside hut, and was eventually identified as Xiao Huamei, who was trafficked in 1997. Xiao’s story brought international attention to the still-persistent world of bride-selling and human trafficking bound to modern China. Jia’s novel, published in 2016, previously gave voice to this issue. Whilst international onlookers were shocked at the local authorities’ complicity in sealing this woman’s fate and the central government’s attempts to recapture the narrative, even this only gave a restricted view. Meanwhile, the topic has been quietly placed at the centre of the Chinese public’s imagination by one of the country’s foremost authors. It’s easy to imagine the subject being locked away, forced into the background to prevent criticism. Yet Broken Wings manages to use fictional accounts of female resolve to trace the outlines of this cage, using literature as a witness to preserve what official accounts may erase."