Angelwings: Contemporary Queer Fiction from Taiwan

“This collection bore testimony to the courage and sophistication of queer fiction in Taiwan during the 1990s. Taiwan has for decades been on the forefront of LGBTQ rights in Asia. (Taiwan legalized gay marriage in 2019, the first Asian country to do so.) In Angelwings, Martin collected and translated ten stark stories published from 1989 through 1998. The stories’ significance also lies in their formal control of stormy psychological conflicts. Trauma threads through many of these stories. Two of the most powerful stories focus on troubled mother-daughter relationships. In Chen Xue’s “Searching for the Lost Wings of the Angel,” the protagonist struggles with hostile ambivalence after her widowed mother turns to prostitution. Through a lesbian affair, the protagonist learns that she could be worth loving, that she loved her mother, and that she can reunite with herself as her lover encourages her to finish the story we are reading. Then she awakes to realize that her lover was a dream.” Read more...

Short Stories from Taiwan

Sabina Knight, Literary Scholar