Rebecca F Kuang has emerged as one of the most prolific writers of the current generation. It’s not only the variety of genres she tackles but also the depth she manages to convey in her books and her choice of subject matter that make her out to be a unique voice in contemporary literature. Since before the publication of Yellowface, the book that launched a thousand opinion pieces, the author has constantly drawn attention to and critiqued the Establishment (within the international publishing industry and Western academia) that ossifies, reifies and then capitalises on migrant or hyphenated subjectivities. Her latest offering, Taipei Story, is no exception to this but somehow the narrative seems more personal than in her previous novels.
The plot is centred on Lily Chen, the narrator protagonist, an undergraduate in East Asian Studies at Yale, who has signed up for a rigorous Chinese language learning course in Taipei during her summer break. Teacher Xu, the program director, warns the students on their orientation that speaking in “anything but Chinese within the department is strictly forbidden”. Three rule breaks and they would be asked to leave the program. As an ambitious, straight A student, Lily seems both excited and scared at the prospect of what lies ahead. She and her friend Anna move into a small apartment and she befriends the social media heartthrob JC, who is a part of their cohort. As the narrative progresses, along with Lily’s progression with her Chinese fluency, everything that she had taken to be a certainty starts to falter. This includes her new and old friendships, her belief in her academic prowess and most of all, her sense of identity.
At many points, Lily is confronted by gaps in her understanding of both Chinese and her cultural lineage. On her first train ride in Taipei, she asks if one could “be homesick for a place you had never been?” As she receives tragic news from home, she begins to question the extent to which she can truly become a native speaker in what was her ‘mother tongue’. Taipei, made up of a palimpsest of South East Asian histories, seems like a liminal space. It’s a state close to Lily’s own as a second-generation Chinese immigrant in the United States. Kuang’s centralising of the Asian perspective and histories works as an important intervention in Anglophone migrant fiction. In her Author’s Note, she states that the novel “plays with diaspora claims to authority and authenticity” and the mythologisation of Taiwan, and directs readers to other credible writers on the country. Yale lies at the periphery of the narrative which is focussed on the National Taiwan University and its surrounding areas. Here, dorms were numbered “instead of being named after dead slave owners”. As the narrative progresses, Lily has to make a speech as part of her final exam and her inspiration for the speech is the 1998 scifi tale Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. In Chiang’s story, the protagonist “learns an alien language and thereby learns to see the future… because the alien language is circular” and in the course of learning it, the protagonist’s conception of time is altered. This story inspired the 2016 film Arrival, which finds no mention in Kuang’s narrative. This omission of a Western interpretation of a literary work by an American writer of Taiwanese descent syncs with Kuang’s larger project of decentralising the cultural hegemony of the West.
{{/usCountry}}At many points, Lily is confronted by gaps in her understanding of both Chinese and her cultural lineage. On her first train ride in Taipei, she asks if one could “be homesick for a place you had never been?” As she receives tragic news from home, she begins to question the extent to which she can truly become a native speaker in what was her ‘mother tongue’. Taipei, made up of a palimpsest of South East Asian histories, seems like a liminal space. It’s a state close to Lily’s own as a second-generation Chinese immigrant in the United States. Kuang’s centralising of the Asian perspective and histories works as an important intervention in Anglophone migrant fiction. In her Author’s Note, she states that the novel “plays with diaspora claims to authority and authenticity” and the mythologisation of Taiwan, and directs readers to other credible writers on the country. Yale lies at the periphery of the narrative which is focussed on the National Taiwan University and its surrounding areas. Here, dorms were numbered “instead of being named after dead slave owners”. As the narrative progresses, Lily has to make a speech as part of her final exam and her inspiration for the speech is the 1998 scifi tale Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. In Chiang’s story, the protagonist “learns an alien language and thereby learns to see the future… because the alien language is circular” and in the course of learning it, the protagonist’s conception of time is altered. This story inspired the 2016 film Arrival, which finds no mention in Kuang’s narrative. This omission of a Western interpretation of a literary work by an American writer of Taiwanese descent syncs with Kuang’s larger project of decentralising the cultural hegemony of the West.
{{/usCountry}}Much like Chiang’s story, Kuang also lends a circularity to the narrative. However, there are no easy answers to the questions about identity, subjectivity and belonging that her protagonist raises throughout the novel. Indeed, Taipei Story raises even more questions and, in the process, cements Kuang’s reputation as an important literary voice.
Simar Bhasin is a literary critic and research scholar who lives in Delhi.