The Membranes (Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan) (Paperback)

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The Membranes (Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan) By Ari Larissa Heinrich (Translator), Ta-Wei Chi Cover Image
By Ari Larissa Heinrich (Translator), Ta-Wei Chi
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Staff Reviews


While this is technically a sci-fi dystopian novel taking place after humanity has destroyed the Earth and has had to move under the ocean (typical, right?), it's really more of an internal look at a woman just trying to get through her life and career as an aesthetician, and, ultimately, a moving take on identity and fraught parent-child relationships. Completely unique, powerful, surprising, and decades ahead of its time. I'd love to read this for the first time again if I could.

— From Felisa C. Staff Picks

Description


It is the late twenty-first century, and Momo is the most celebrated dermal care technician in all of T City. Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape devastating climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor. Momo prefers to keep to herself, and anyway she's too busy for other relationships: her clients include some of the city's best-known media personalities. But after meeting her estranged mother, she begins to explore her true identity, a journey that leads to questioning the bounds of gender, memory, self, and reality.

First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes--heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies--into a sensitive portrait of one young woman's quest for self-understanding. Predicting everything from fitness tracking to social media saturation, this visionary and sublime novel stands out for its queer and trans themes. The Membranes reveals the diversity and originality of contemporary speculative fiction in Chinese, exploring gender and sexuality, technological domination, and regimes of capital, all while applying an unflinching self-reflexivity to the reader's own role. Ari Larissa Heinrich's translation brings Chi's hybrid punk sensibility to all readers interested in books that test the limits of where speculative fiction can go.

About the Author


Chi Ta-wei is a renowned writer and scholar from Taiwan. Chi's scholarly work focuses on LGBT studies, disability studies, and Sinophone literary history, while his award-winning creative writing ranges from science fiction to queer short stories. He is an associate professor of Taiwanese literature at the National Chengchi University. Ari Larissa Heinrich is a professor of Chinese literature and media at the Australian National University. They are the author of Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Medically Commodified Body (2018) and other books, and the translator of Qiu Miaojin's novel Last Words from Montmartre (2014).
Product Details
ISBN: 9780231195713
ISBN-10: 0231195710
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication Date: June 1st, 2021
Pages: 168
Language: English
Series: Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan