Rayna Prohme

Rayna Prohme (1894 - 1927) was a journalist who covered the communist movement in China in the late 1920s.

Biography

She was born Rayna Simons, the daughter of a successful Jewish businessman. She graduated from the University of Illinois in 1917, ^{[1] [2]} where she befriended Dorothy Day. ^[3] Day's book, The Long Loneliness , describes their activities reading socialist novellas and joining the Socialist Party of America. ^[4]

From 1918 to 1922 she was married to Samson Raphaelson, a marriage that ended in divorce. ^[1] She later met and married William "Bill" Prohme who worked for William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Examiner. They moved to China, where Prohme's sister, Grace Simons was working in China. ^[5]

In 1926 she started working with Eugene Chen who was publishing the People's Tribune. ^{[6] [1]} Prohme and the American journalist Milly Bennett edited the People's Tribune in Hankou from 1926 until July 1927. ^[7] While in China, Prohme was among the people admiring Mikhail Markowitsch Borodin, whom Lenin had sent to China in September 1923. ^[1] Jointly Prohme and Bennett wrote a speech in which Soong Ching-ling, Sun Yat-sen's wife, resigned from her government position, and then Prohme helped her leave Hankou ^[7] and make her way to Russia. ^{[3] [8]} Prohme also met the American screen writer Vincent Sheean in 1926 and he would eventually dedicate his memoir, Personal History, to Prohme whom he called "a marvelously pure flame". ^[9] Within Personal History, Sheean talks about Prohme's work in China. ^{[10] [11]} He also talks about his relationship to her in an article published in the Atlantic Monthly. ^[12]

Anna Louise Strong tried to help Prohme when she became ill; ^[3] however, Prohme died on November 21, 1927, ^{[13] [14]} and was cremated in Russia. ^[15] A book of Prohme's letters about her reporting during the Chinese Revolution was published after her death. ^[16]

Selected publications

• Hirson, Baruch; Prohme, Rayna; Knodel, Arthur J. (2007-08-20). Reporting the Chinese Revolution: The Letters of Rayna Prohme. Pluto Press. ISBN   978-0-7453-2642-9.

References

1. Jacobs, Dan N. (Dan Norman) (1981). Borodin : Stalin's man in China. Internet Archive. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press. ISBN   978-0-674-07910-6.
2. Taylor, S. J. (1990-03-29). Stalin's Apologist: Walter Duranty: The New York Times's Man in Moscow. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN   978-0-19-505700-3.
3. Nies, Judith (2002-10-15). Nine Women: Portraits from the American Radical Tradition. University of California Press. ISBN   978-0-520-22965-5.
4. Day, Dorothy (1981). The long loneliness : the autobiography of Dorothy Day. San Francisco: Harper & Row. ISBN   0-06-061751-9. OCLC   7554814.
5. French, Paul (2009-05-01). Through the Looking Glass: China's Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao. Hong Kong University Press. ISBN   978-962-209-982-1.
6. Chen, Yuan-tsung (2008). Return to the Middle Kingdom: One Family, Three Revolutionaries, and the Birth of Modern China. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. ISBN   978-1-4027-5697-9.
7. King, Marjorie M. (1994). "Review of On Her Own: Journalistic Adventures from San Francisco to the Chinese Revolution, 1917—1927". China Review International. 1 (1): 59–62. ISSN   1069-5834. JSTOR   23728654.
8. Chang, Jung (1986). Mme Sun Yat-Sen (Soong Ching-ling). Internet Archive. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England ; New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Penguin Books. ISBN   978-0-14-008455-9.
9. Pomfret, John (2016-11-29). The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present. Henry Holt and Company. ISBN   978-1-4299-4412-0.
10. Sheean, Vincent (1933). In search of history : the modern gothic. George Allen and Unwin, London.
11. Hamilton, John Maxwell (2008). "Interpret the World". Columbia Journalism Review. 47 (2) – via EBSCO.
12. Sheean, Vincent (1935). Finale in Moscow. Vol. 155. The Atlantic Monthly. Atlantic Media, Inc.
13. "RAYNA PROHME DEAD; DEVOTED TO CHINESE; American Girl Who Gave Her Life to Revolution Breathes Her Last in Moscow". New York Times. November 22, 1927. Retrieved 2022-04-15.
14. Schwartz, Stephen (1998). From west to east : California and the making of the American mind. Internet Archive. New York : Free Press. ISBN   978-0-684-83134-3.
15. "Red rites for Mrs. Prohme". The Kansas City Times. 1927-11-25. p. 6. Retrieved 2022-04-15.
16. Hirson, Baruch; Prohme, Rayna; Knodel, Arthur J. (2007-08-20). Reporting the Chinese Revolution: The Letters of Rayna Prohme. Pluto Press. ISBN   978-0-7453-2642-9.
    Reviewed by
    • Mackinnon, Stephen R. (2008). "Review of Reporting the Chinese Revolution: The Letters of Rayna Prohme". Pacific Affairs. 81 (1): 107–109. ISSN   0030-851X. JSTOR   40377493.
    • Gittings, John (2008). "Review of Reporting the Chinese Revolution: The Letters of Rayna Prohme" . Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 71 (3): 597–598. doi:10.1017/S0041977X08001110. ISSN   0041-977X. JSTOR   40378828. S2CID   162561079.

Further reading

• Bennett, Milly (1993). On Her Own: Journalistic Adventures from San Francisco to the Chinese Revolution, 1917-1927. M.E. Sharpe. ISBN   978-1-56324-182-6.
• French, Paul (2009-05-01). Through the Looking Glass: China's Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao. Hong Kong University Press. ISBN   978-962-209-982-1.
• Rand, Peter (1995). China hands : the adventures and ordeals of the American journalists who joined forces with the great Chinese revolution. Internet Archive. New York : Simon & Schuster. ISBN   978-0-684-80844-4.