膜/The Membranes by 紀大偉 (Chi Ta-wei)

AUTHOR: 紀大偉 (Chi Ta-wei)

GENRE: FICTION

ISBN: 9570837691

RELEASE DATE: MAR 17 2011

PAGES: 456 PAGES

WRITTEN LANGUAGE: CHINESE (TRADITIONAL)

EDITION LANGUAGE: CHINESE (TRADITIONAL)

★★★★

I read this book because of LGBTQ in Translation Project hosted by Jen from Jen the Librarian. The book for February is to read The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei translated from traditional Chinese. Therefore I read this short story collection that has The Membranes and many other stories. So this review will be in two parts. The Membranes and other stories.

The Membranes

This is considered a classic queer speculative fiction set in the future when human beings have migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea due to climate change. The story centered around the protagonist Momo who’s a dermal care technician. We follow her narrative and get to know her world, things, and people she encountered. Even though it’s a short story, a lot of things are going on. And the sound of Mo appears countless times in the book. The protagonist is called Momo, it’s the Chinese word for membranes, and a lot of the objects in the book have the same sound too.

This is such a peculiar story with wild imagination of the future. The story is set in the 22nd century, but it was written in 1995, so it’s very interesting to see Chi’s prediction of the future, what things really happened in our current world, what things went in a totally different direction from his speculation.

I really liked how the book dealt with gender fluidity and sexuality in the book. It also discusses the meaning of genders and is that really necessary.

Not only gender is fluid in this book, but a lot of many other things too. Chi is constantly breaking down the concept of gender. Twisting realities and imaginations, mixing truth and fiction. I found it’s interesting that because the author also wants to write about the interactions among females, therefore there are no male characters in the book.

We had a very good discussion about this book in the discord of LGBTQ in Translation Project, and I feel like I learnt so much from the discussion. As a heterosexual person, I see the lacking in my understanding, and the limits of my thoughts from the discussions, and I appreciate the whole group so much!

Rest of the Stories in this collection

This book also has other three major parts with 17 stories. Fluidity is definitely a keyword of these stories. It’s fascinating to think about how fluid can Chi write about nearly everything. Gender fluidity, sexuality, feminism, desires, technologies and so much more. Some are even just common items or concepts we have in our day-to-day life, but he was just able to see things from a different angle and make us discover the hidden possibilities.

I also really enjoyed the writing of the book, I underlined so many sentences just because of how beautiful they are written. I feel like this happens more when I was reading books in Chinese, but I really appreciate the sentence to sentence writing in this book, and I even want to recite a lot of them.

Overall this is a collection that I feel is well worth reading, and I’m really glad I did.