Li Ang

Appreciations

Daisy S.Y. Ng

Professor Daisy S. Y. Ng wrote her M.Phil. thesis on Li Ang’s fiction and has published critical essays on Li Ang’s earlier writing, such as “Feminism in the Chinese context: Li Ang’s The Butcher’s Wife,” ”Li Ang’s Experiments with the Epistolary Form,” and “The Labyrinth of Meaning: A Reading of Li Ang’s Fiction.” She received her doctoral degree from Harvard University and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Division of Humanities, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Li Ang: Taiwan’s Most Controversial Woman Writer

Of all the influential writers in contemporary Taiwan, Li Ang is definitely the most controversial fiction writer. Ever since the publication of her first short story, “Flower Season” (1968), at the tender age of sixteen, she has made splashes with each and every one of her fiction, not least within the literary scene but often causing phenomenal reverberations throughout society, as with her first novella, Shafu (The Butcher’s Wife) and later fictions, particularly Beigang xianglu renrencha [Everyone sticks it in Pei-kang’s incense pot] for which many believe to be based upon true stories involving real power players in Taiwan’s political stage.

Li Ang’s groundbreaking boldness in broaching the subject of sex (hereto a taboo topic for women writers in Taiwan) right from the beginning of her writing career has given her a unique position in the literary scene of Taiwan akin to a cult figure. The first fiction which made her name, The Butcher’s Wife, firmly established her as a feminist writer whose work transgresses the boundaries of what is conventionally considered to be proper subjects and style for women writers.

Transgression of norms in fact characterizes all of Li Ang’s fictional writing and brings her both acclaim and vitriolic attacks. Her novels are often received with dramatic reactions, be it denouncement or endorsement. The fact that her works have repeatedly caused such stir bespeaks of their cutting edge qualities, literally and figuratively; for Li Ang has never been one to shy from scalpel-like dissection of controversial issues in all her works. Her writing exemplifies “the personal is the political” in unraveling the relation between sex and power in novella such as An ye [Dark Nights], Mi yuan [The Maze], and of course, Everyone sticks it in Pei-kang’s incense pot as well as numerous short stories.

What is enthralling about Li Ang is also the versatility of her subjects and her unceasing exploration of narrative voice and experimentation with generic conventions. From the early stories heavily influenced by Existentialism and Freudian psychoanalysis in the late 60s, the socially conscious stories on gender and sexuality in the Renjianshi [Human world] of the early 70s, the transgressive The Butcher’s Wife and the epistolatory series of Yifeng weijide qingshu (A Love Letter Never Sent) in the 80s, The Maze which attempts to recreate a native Taiwan subjectivity in early 90s, the sensational Everyone sticks it in Pei-kang’s incense pot in late 90s, the fictional autobiographies of Xie Xuehong at the turn of the century, the spectral discourse of Kandejian de guai [Visible ghosts] in the early 2000’s, to the more recent gastronomic fiction, Yuanyan chunshan [Lovebirds’ meals], Li Ang has continued to both shock us and delight us with diverse but equally relentless confrontation with issues surrounding sexual politics. She is indeed one of the most fascinating figures in contemporary Chinese literary scene.