A Revisionist History Of Footbinding

"Dorothy Ko's daring in taking on the difficult subject of footbinding has resulted in a tour-de-force. In "Cinderella's Sisters she rises above nationalist, feminist, and Orientalist polemic to place footbinding clearly in the domain of the history of fashion. Her ingenious narrative strategy--putting the modern story of foobinding's disappearance at the beginning--sets up her historical account of its premodern heyday as a story of concealment--of hidden sources, hidden bodies, and hidden meanings. As illusion, footbinding reveals women's sisterhood in responses to being objects of desire."--Charlotte Furth, author of "A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China's Medical History: 960-1665