小說/散文

Bound Feet: Stories of Taiwan in Transition
出版社： 書林出版有限公司
書林書號：
10017654
作者：
Dai, Catherine
定價：
380
會員價：
$323
ISBN：
9789574458684
出版年份：
2019
裝訂：
平裝
總頁數：
312
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《纏足：台灣短篇小說集》
收錄二十篇短篇故事，背景描寫民國七十年代、正處於台美斷交後與解嚴前夕的台灣社會。在人心與大環境均充滿不安躁動的這個年代，台灣人如何尋找新的身份認同？又如何在個人追求與集體取向之間找到平衡點？Bound Feet: Stories of Taiwan in Transition呈現了在這個台灣社會轉型期間的台灣眾生相。

A writer struck with writer’s block seeks theassistance of the wild drunken god—Ji Gong. With his help, lives are revealedand secrets spill out from behind the “face” everyone is so eager to preserve.This collection of short stories covers a period from when the United Statesceased to diplomatically recognize the Republic of China on Taiwan in 1979 tothe end of martial law in 1987. Freedom is both desired and feared, and Taiwanmust create a new national identity. Families try to adjust to shifts of poweras traditional roles are shed, yet linger, and new ones are tentativelybroached or bravely adopted. Individuals struggle between private dreams andcollective aspirations. Among them, a model-turned-photographer supports herfather’s former master from China; an American sinologist learns everythingabout Chinese culture except how to keep his Taiwanese wife; a Taiwanesebusinessman struggles with the mental illness of his eldest son. Interweavingtheir stories, the writer overhears a mad neighbor shouting her torment to thestars in indecipherable fragments. Ji Gong offers no solace other than to lifthis liquor-filled hulu gourd andlaugh.


Catherine Dai has published other fiction with BookmanBooks, including Under the Phoenix Treeand Sringara Tales. She resides andteaches in Taipei.

Preface to the New Edition

To Buy a God

The Wisteria Groom

“While My Hair Was Still Cut Straight Across My Forehead”

Disco Night

Interview with a Chrysanthemum

Portrait of a Shrew

The Devil’s Advocate

Why the Taiwanese Shouldn’t Have Dogs, or the BreadBastard

The Princeling of Chow

God Bought

The Photographer’s Daughter

The Smile of Buddha

The Noodle Stand Dance

Tea

Three Pineapples and a Wall Tiger

The Fox Fairy at the F.R.A

On the Margin

Auf Wiedersehen

The Taiwanese Eve

GodUnbound

Preface tothe New Edition

The Bound Feet stories werewritten about Taiwan during its period of transition in the 1980s, when itchanged from being a predominantly agricultural country to an industrial one,from being governed by a military dictatorship to becoming the first democraticChinese society. Many Taiwanese had been educated by the Japanese and continuedto have close ties with Japan; others were going to the United States forhigher education and returned with American notions of political progress. Withthe restoration of civil liberties, a growing sense of nationalism took holdamong local people who were reclaiming their language and culture made fromunique historical circumstances. At the same time, others were nostalgic for a disappearingway of life as the population grew, prosperity spread through a broadeningmiddleclass, and property became expensive. The Bound Feet stories expressthese changes through the shifting relations between parents and children,women and men, locals and foreigners, and in the coming of age of thegeneration born in Taiwan of both Chinese and Taiwanese parents. In the text,the Wade-Giles Romanization system is often used to reflect the way in whichChinese words were rendered for non-Chinese speakers in Taiwan at that time.

CatherineDai

Taipei, 2019
bookman