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This article discusses two different books. The first book, "Mastery of Words and Swords: Negotiating Intellectual Masculinities in Modern China, 1890s-1930s," by Jun Lei, focuses on the study of masculinity in China during a period of transition. The book examines how Chinese male intellectuals sought to reformulate and perform modern manhood ideals in response to colonial discourses and imperialist invasions. The second book, "The Oxford Handbook of South Korean Politics," edited by JeongHun Han, Ramon Pacheco Pardo, and Youngho Cho, explores various aspects of South Korean politics and provides valuable insights into the country's political and economic dynamics. Both books contribute to the fields of Chinese studies, postcolonial studies, and gender and sexuality studies, and offer informative and inspiring perspectives for readers interested in these topics. [Extracted from the article]

"Sounding the Everyday: Gendered Acoustic Aesthetics of Immaterial Labor and Female Leadership in Socialist Shanghai," aims to challenge the popular view that a highly abstracted and politicized socialist labor aesthetics exiles the category of everydayness. Using the 1959 film Colors of Spring (Wanzi qianhong zong shi chun) as an example, Xiao shows that the radical agenda of socialist revolution turns traditional "feminine noises" (including women's everyday conversations and particular sonic elements related to their everyday labor) into revolutionary sounds. More importantly, women play an unprecedentedly active role in shaping the parameters of the new sociopolitical agenda not only through joining the labor force to produce material goods, but also through expanding their access to soundproducing practices that should also be recognized as essential forms of gendered labor (including reproductive and care work at home as well as emotional, intellectual, and organizational labor at work). Through a revisit to the aesthetics and politics of representing tangible sensory experiences of women's immaterial labor in socialist cinema, we could better understand the sociopolitical significance of socialist women's liberation that should not be reduced to a utilitarian top-down project of liberating the untapped potential of women's labor power, but more of a biopolitical revolution through which women transform themselves into active agents in creating new sound practices, communicational networks, social relations, and subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]