Book Description

For this special issue on “New Generation Women's Fiction from Taiwan,” we have specially invited Professor Lee Kuei Yun of the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature at Taiwan's Tsing Hua University to be guest editor and take responsibility for the selections. Because of space limitations it has been possible only to select twelve short stories by eleven woman writers. These writers were all born in the 1970s or later and their works were published in the year 2000 or later. Thus, they represent a period of social change in twenty-first century Taiwan and the spirit of the new generation. The introduction that we asked Professor Lee to provide is entitled “Trauma, esire, Contemporary Women's Voices.” Aside from giving a brief account of the eleven writers and their works, Professor Lee sketches “a number of writerly qualities that become perceptible… [that] represent the internal trauma, female consciousness, physical lust, cat-uman metaphors, and everyday life, etc.” In her introduction, what she particularly stresses is that the sexual desire depicted in these works exposes the internal wounds derived from private individual experience hidden away in the deepest levels of the female consciousness that are exposed for direct observation, and “… [from this] we can tease out a clear semblance of a feminine texture that reverberates with the unique sound of contemporary women's voices.” This then is one of the most important qualities of the new generation of aiwanese women's fiction. In the final analysis, trauma and writing about desire are two major themes of Taiwanese women's literature. 《台灣新世代女性小説》這一專輯，我們特地請台灣清華大學台灣文學研究所李癸雲教授擔任客座編輯，負責選稿。因受篇幅的限制，只選11位女性小説家的短篇小説12篇，作者都是1970年以後出生、其作品發表於2000年以後，反映出二十一世紀台灣社會的變動現象和新世代的精神樣貌。同時我們請李教授撰寫一篇導輪，題爲〈創傷．情慾．時代女聲〉，除了簡述11位作家及其作品之外，還勾勒出其中「隱隱浮現某些書寫特徵，關於內在創傷、女性意識、身體情慾、人與貓的互喻、日常生活等」。本輯導論〈創傷．情慾．時代女聲〉中所特別强調的是，這些作品所書寫的情慾、流露出女性意識底層所隱含的個人私密經驗的内在創傷，而正視創傷，「藉此梳理出形貌清晰的女性肌理，迴盪出『時代女聲』的特殊音色」，成爲新世代台灣女性小説的一大特徵。