The idea for this book came from Mao Zedong
's extinguishing of Taoism
in the Cultural Revolution in China.
Brown, Jeremy K. Ursula K. Le Guin. Chelsea House, 2011.
101
Intertextuality and Influence
Ursula K. Le Guin
This novel was influenced by research into dreams that was done in the 1960s, and also by the doctrines of Taoism
. Le Guin headed her chapters with quotations from the ancient Chinese writers Lao Tzu
Textual Features
Ursula K. Le Guin
The reader has to grapple with the question which of these two is the Other, or whether Otherness exists. The heroine, Rolery, is white but a planetary alien; her marriage to Jakob Agat is a...
Textual Features
Ursula K. Le Guin
Its setting is our own planet during the distant future. The Shing have taken over and the aboriginal inhabitants of earth are oppressed and downtrodden. Whereas mindspeech conveys the truth of what an individual is...
Textual Production
Ursula K. Le Guin
The image was inspired in part by stories of Arctic and Antarctic explorers like Scott
and Shackleton
. The plot was inspired in part by curiosity about a society with gender subtracted from it: what...
Textual Production
Ursula K. Le Guin
2009 saw Le Guin publish both her translation of the Tao
text Te Ching, and another volume of her essays, Cheek by Jowl.