Chen Xue, Missing Fathers, and Queer Alternatives

Abstract

This chapter examines several works Chen Xue (陳雪), one of Taiwan’s most prominent lesbian authors, published (or republished) in the months immediately before and after Taiwan’s 2019 legalization of same-sex marriage. In particular, the chapter considers the relationship between Chen Xue’s focus on homoerotic themes in works spanning her entire literary career, on one hand, and the putatively straight premise of her 2019 novel, Fatherless City (無父之城)—and suggests the hinge between the two sets of literary concerns is a twin thematization of absent fathers and of literary production. In particular, in each of the works under consideration, lost or absent fathers function as a catalyst for innovative literary production and/or queer reconfigurations of phallo-patriarchal social structures.

Many readers’ impression of Chen Xue is that of a tongzhi author skilled at self-analysis, and in recent years the shadow of her relationship with her partner, Breakfaster, has frequently been visible in initiatives supporting marriage equality. Now, a hundred days after the legalization of same-sex marriage, she has returned to her creative work, and has resumed using fiction to explore people’s relationship to their home and to their homeland.

Hsu (2019)