In the Shadow of the 20th Century: Working-Class Literature in China and the Worker Poetry Journal

China has a rich tradition of working-class literature dating back to the first half of the 20th century. The “proletarian literature” movement of the 1920s–1930s and the state-driven “worker-peasant-soldier” from the 1940s to the 1970s were created in connection with the revolutionary enterprise and the state construction effort. Following the market reforms of the 1980s, literature produced by the new (often migrant) working class has been radically different, often focusing more on the author’s subjectivity and personal experience than the historical destinies of the class. All these very different instances, however, are connected by common aspects: from the possibility of producing a literary form by and for the working class, to the role played by mediators in the shaping of such literature (be they intellectuals, state authorities, or sympathetic members of the cultural establishment). This chapter discusses how these questions resurface in the textual activity of a group of worker poets in today’s China grouped around the journal Worker Poetry. In particular, it interrogates the group’s refusal of workers’ poetry as a mere literary genre and its attempt to use it to foster class consciousness, connecting to the historical tradition of working-class politics in China, but also pointing out the multiple cultural references it employs to this end. The journal’s writing practice demonstrates that poetry can become a viable instrument for workers to reclaim their right to subjecthood.