Iron Moon

By Eleanor Goodman (translator),

Book cover of Iron Moon: An Anthology of Chinese Worker Poetry

Book description

"Iron Moon is a monumental achievement. It redraws the boundaries of working-class poetry for the new millennium by incorporating at its center issues like migration, globalization, and rank-and-file resistance. We hear in these poems what Zheng Xiaoqiong calls "a language of callouses." This isn't a book about the lost industrial…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked Iron Moon as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This anthology contains many of the poems that first made me realise that grim working conditions among China’s underclass were producing an extraordinary cultural response.

The writers of these poems are people who’ve left their rural homes behind to seek a living in the nation’s big cities, places that need their labor but grant them only a chilly welcome. Their poetry, superbly translated here, is about the factory floor, the assembly line, the roar of machines: it’s about amputated fingers, fluorescent lights, ID cards, and tower cranes.

It’s also about homesickness, love affairs, lost hopes, and camaraderie. For me, the…

Want books like Iron Moon?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 14 books like Iron Moon.

Browse books like Iron Moon

Book cover of Northern Girls: Life Goes On
Book cover of Subaltern China: Rural Migrants, Media, and Cultural Practices
Book cover of Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and the Lives of China's Workers

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,187

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in migrant workers, China, and seniors?

Migrant Workers 14 books
China 646 books
Seniors 35 books