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Lake County Public Library
Searching on an online library catalog can be frustrating. Don’t be afraid to ask for help on how to learn how to navigate the web catalog. Librarians are there to help you. For the purposes of this pathfinder I’m going to use the Lake County Public Library’s online catalog. Not every library catalog is the same but once you know how to use one, navigating others is a little easier. You can get to the catalog by typing in www.lakeco.lib.in.us. Click on library catalog and then click on web catalog (HTLM version). You then will be directed into the catalog itself. The best searching approach is to click on more searches at the top of the page. This gives you a list of searching options. Remember to keep your search terms simplistic. Again, less is more. For your search the General Key Word and Subject Key Word search boxes are good to start with. General Key Word will search entire records and provide you with records that have the key words in them. Subject Key Word searches the subject headings within a record. Once in a record pay attention to subject headings because they can help lead to other searches.
Subject Key Words
Bound Feet
Foot Binding
Footbinding
Fiction
Bound by Donna Jo Napoli
New York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, c2004
In a novel based on Chinese Cinderella tales, fourteen-year-old stepchild Xing-Xing endures a life of neglect and servitude, as her stepmother cruelly mutilates her own child's feet so that she alone might marry well.
Ties that Bind, Ties that Break by Lensky Namioka
New York : Delacorte Press, c1999
It's 1911, and China is slowly beginning to accept modern ideas--but the changes may not happen fast enough for young Ailin. Her grandmother has decided it's time she has her feet bound, to make her more attractive to a future husband. When Ailin sees the sad state of her sister's feet, she is stunned. "I stared at the pitiful stumps at the end of Second Sister's legs... her foot had been squeezed into a wedge: the big toe had been left undeformed, but the rest of the foot... had been forced down under the sole... like a piece of bread folded over." Luckily, Ailin's progressive father allows her to keep her feet unfettered, even though it means breaking off her prearranged marriage into a more traditional family. He also sends her to a public school to learn English. But by the time Ailin is in her teens, her father has died, leaving her less tolerant Big Uncle to be the head of the family. Big Uncle forbids Ailin's schooling and gives her the choice of either being a nun or a peasant's wife--the only alternatives left for an unmarried Chinese woman with "big feet."
The Three-Inch Golden Lotus by Feng Jicai
Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, c1994
Feng creates a world that revolves around the fine art of foot binding, the ultimate being the perfect, three-inch-long "golden lotus." Young Fragrant Lotus's perfect golden lotuses take her from her impoverished orphanhood to the leading house in Tianjin in the 1890s to the 1930s.
Non-Fiction
Bound Feet & Western Dress by Pang-Mei Natasha Chang
New York : Doubleday, c1996
When Chang Yu-I was three her mother tried to bind her feet. But the child's cries so tormented her brother that he convinced their mother to stop. This break with convention foreshadowed the extraordinary life Yu-i was to lead. After following her husband, poet Hsu Chi-Mo, a noted philanderer, to Oxford, she made history by becoming the first Chinese woman to have a western-style divorce at age 22. Determined to make her own way, she moved to America and served in a series of prestigious positions, including president of a bank.
From Head to Toe: bound feet, bathing suits, and other bizarre and beautiful things by Janice Weaver
Toronto : Tundra Books ; Plattsburgh, N.Y. : Tundra Books of Northern New York, c2003
Weaver offers a cross-cultural exploration of fashion "in some of its weirdest, wildest, and most wonderful forms," mostly in Western cultures. The book is arranged in broad chapters, covering women's and men's clothing; hairstyles and facial hair; accessories such as jewelry, umbrellas, and hats; makeup and tattoos; and shoes. Throughout, Weaver discusses fashion fads and the social and historical changes that fostered them.
Splendid Slippers: a thousand years of an erotic tradition by Beverly Jackson
Berkeley, Calif. : Ten Speed Press, c1997
In a fascinating yet gruesome account of the former practice of binding the feet of Chinese girls, Jackson details the 1,000-year history, the necessary surgery and two-year process, the shoes and embroidery, and the lore (erotic and otherwise), as well as comparisons with other cultures (e.g., the so-called giraffe women of Burma, whose necks stretch as a result of an increasing series of necklaces).
