Uses of the Archive in Feminist Biography: The Case of Soong Mayling (Madame Chiang Kai-shek), “Mother of China” and “First Lady of the World” During China's War of Resistance, 1937–45

A full-length article from August 1937, complete with an elegant photo featuring Soong Mayling (1899-2003) in Henry R. Luce’s (1898–1967) Life magazine, describes Soong working tirelessly alongside her husband, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975), at the start of China’s War of Resistance (1937-1945). Soong was holding “day-and-night conferences” with government and army leaders. Her roles included serving as the “secretary-general of the air force,” “chief of the women’s division of the semi-religious New Life Movement of China,” and a “leader in the Red Cross.” Needing to discharge the duties for multiple roles, Soong Mayling and her husband worked sixteen- or twenty-hour days; war also compelled her to expand her role as “mother of China” and scholars have observed how she worked indefatigably for refugees, orphans, and wounded soldiers, and inspired thousands of other women to follow her lead.

This presentation discusses the use of both publicly curated and privately assembled archives from around the world in the recently released Soong Mayling and Wartime China, 1937-1945: Deploying Words as Weapons (Rowman & Littlefield/Bloomsbury 2025) to explore questions of access and methodology. What are the constraints and possibilities in accessing Party-curated archives in both Taiwan and the PRC, especially in relation to the subject’s connection with national and public histories? Do transnational, multilingual subjects such as Soong Mayling require the use of global, multilingual archives and if so, why? How might one bridge the subject’s private and public personae that enriches and complicates “official” histories through oral history? How might a transnational turn in uses of the archive enrich feminist biography, especially in conceptions of identity and citizenship? Lastly, how might the accessibility of archives evolve depending on the interpretive needs of local, national, and public history?