The
Thirty-fifth Wu San Lien Literary Awards, Category of Novel
Award
Certificate
LI Ang was
born in 1952 in the town of Lugang of Zhanghua County Taiwan as SHI Shuduan. In 1968 she entered the literary scene of
Taiwan with her first short story “Flower Season,” and since then, Li Ang has been
challenging the boundary of social constraints and taboos with an
uncompromising philosophy of “going forward against tens of thousands.” She is brilliant
at scalpel-like dissection of the psyche of her characters, depicting their images
of the time and tackling social issues, and these incisive depictions and discourse
in her writing clearly have reflected her critical mind and insightful
observations of the world. Her
groundbreaking boldness in exploring a new frontier of literature especially deserves
the attention and admiration. Each of
her new books has opened up a new subject for discussion, which is not only an
indication of the writer’s high level of self-awareness, but also the writer’s aggressive
expansion of her writing styles as a Taiwanese fiction writer. Most of all, it has triggered a different landscape
of literary criticism in Taiwan.
Li Ang’s continuously searching for
explosive subjects for her writing constantly causes controversy and criticisms
from others, but all the arguments only have shown us her cutting-edge ideas
and progressive thinking. What is
astonishing is that the subject matter of her fiction is cleverly intertwined
with the political, economical and social developments in a dynamic time period. Her most attention grabbing texts on female
body and erotic writing are codes for trauma and symbols of defiance, and they
are powerful weapons to satirize Taiwanese politics and society. From her The
Butcher’s Wife, Lost Garden, Autobiography: A Novel, Beigang Incense Burner of Lust, Visible Ghosts to An Erotic Feast for Lovebirds, Marriage
in Seven Lives: Entangled Love Affair of Taiwanese/Mainlander, Possession and so on, in each work, she clearly
takes a critical perspective on the history, society, politics, class, gender
and identity of Taiwan. Through sexual
desire, national allegory, space and landscape, ghost spirits/ power, gourmet
food/domination, Li Ang deconstructs the structure of old Taiwanese society,
rebels against patriarchal culture, stimulates female independent awareness,
and gives a true account of difficult issues and social aspects during the process
of Taiwan’s modernization. She also
reexamines the history and politics of Taiwan from an ordinary woman’s point of
view, and in the midst of entanglements of sexual desire and politics; she
constructs a strange and perplexing scene of a-hundred-year long Taiwanese
history and an imagination of a wishful nation from both sides of Taiwan
Straits. Li Ang’s fictional artistry efforts
are quite commendable, ranging from adopting themes from folklores; employing the
special traits of epistolary style in fiction writing and creating a polar opposition
of “looking/ being looked at,” “speaking/ being spoken to,” “eating/ being eaten,”
to using tremendous amount of parenthetical expressions in the texts to create
enough extraneous sounds that cannot be ignored. Each of her novels is filled with rich
symbols, metaphors and significance, and therefore her novels are constantly
followed with interest and being discussed.
In her more than forty-year writing
career, Li Ang has continued to dig out more space for discourse for women
writers, and many of her novels have been translated into many languages. Her determination and efforts for literature
not only has carved out a space for Taiwanese literature in the international
literary scene, but also exerts considerable influence within the country and
overseas. She rightfully deserves the
recognition. We, the committee, have
chosen Ms. LI Ang to be the winner of the Thirty-fifth Wu San Lien Literary Awards.
(Provided
by Wu San Lien Awards Foundation)