Bread and Roses

The second long-form project of The Song of Inanna.

South Wales, 1910. The daughter of a newly rich family comes back to a home town thick with coal smoke, walks into the screening shed, and into the world of the women who work there. A pit disaster, a strike, a long march for the vote — we want bread, and we want roses too.

It is a story about labour, class, and what women are to one another. Five parts, about 40,000 Chinese characters.

Watch

Full audiobook film (about 2 h 43 min)

Part One: The Daughter of the Newly Rich

Part Two: Into the Screening Shed

Part Three: A First Season in Society

Part Four: The Silence of the Canary

Part Five: After the Rescue

All of these films are also on the YouTube channel.

Read

All five parts are now available in English. The story is told in the second person: you are Isabel.

1. Part One: The Daughter of the Newly Rich
2. Part Two: Into the Screening Shed
3. Part Three: A First Season in Society
4. Part Four: The Silence of the Canary
5. Part Five: After the Rescue

The Chinese original remains the definitive text. The translation is AI-assisted and reviewed by the author. The verses sung underground are from James Oppenheim’s 1911 poem “Bread and Roses”, quoted in the original. For the history behind the story, see the research notes on the women who worked the pits of industrial Europe, the all-women mine rescue team, the Bluestockings and the male impersonators of the Victorian stage.