周芬伶的家庭散文是其文學創作的一大特色,但她回憶生命之河後所寫下的家族故事,並非只是單純的回憶錄或家族史,而是她療傷自癒、檢視生命,和建構自我的方式。分析她的家庭散文可以發現,她的家庭散文從談論性別地位不平等所造成的家庭悲劇,轉而大量談論與女性的情誼、女性的美好;從兼論男女成員的生命歷程,到著力於母女、母系家族關係的描述,這種拒絕歌頌男女愛戀、社會性別期待的家族書寫,話語的背後與周芬伶的女性主體意識有密切關聯。她利用替女性建構的言說空間,再現不為男性所知的女性經驗與感受,顛覆「以父為名」的父權象徵秩序,讓長期被誤解、遺忘的女性聲音得以再現,重新宣示母系的根源性與重要性,也利用文字書寫讓自我重生。
One of the most significant features representing Fen-Ling Zhou's literature creation is her family narratives. The family stories extracted from her life memories were not only simple memoirs or family history, but the means, by which she healed herself, examined her life, and constructed her ego. Analyzing her family narratives, we found that her work has been concentrated on discussing a series of agenda evolving from family tragedies caused by sexual-discrimination to female friendship and female merits, and from discussing life experiences both on men and women to stressing mothdaughter and maternal family relationship. Such family stories, refusing elaborating romances between men and women and following social expectation on gender, reflected Zhou's feminism ideology. By constructing a literary space for women, she had women's experiences and feelings, long ignored by men, re-emerged. By overthrowing the orders symbolizing the authority ”in the name of the father”, she had the women's voices, long miss-understood and forgotten, sounded. She re-claimed the importance and origination of maternity, by writing, as well as had herself re-born.