Running Mother and Other Stories

Running Mother and Other Stories is an important source for literary scholars, not only for research but also for teaching modern Chinese and Taiwanese literature. -- Lingchei Letty Chen, Washington University As a writer and political activist, Guo Songfen, one of the most intriguing writers of the contemporary Taiwanese literary scene, wrote about youthful patriotic sentiments, disillusionment, displacement, ideals versus reality, the clash between personal happiness and political involvement, betrayal, and exile. Significantly, many of his stories deal with Taiwan's political situation during the martial law era and its impact on an individual's life. This collection contributes to the representation of atrocity, with Guo's unique narrative style that is often elliptical yet lyrical, subtle but poignant. -- Sylvia Li-chun Lin, University of Notre Dame, and author of Representing Atrocity in Taiwan: The 2/28 Incident and White Terror in Fiction and Film

Guo Songfen's short stories are masterful psychological portraits that play with the echoes of history and the nature of identity. One of the few modernists to truly capture the fallout from such events as the February 28th Incident and the White Terror, Guo Songfen illuminates the quiet core of his characters through a spare and immediate style that is at once a symptom and an allegory of the trauma in which they live. In "Running Mother," a man is torn between his fear of abandonment and his guilt over leaving his family, and therefore his symbolic home, behind. "Moon Seal" follows a woman caught between traditional and modern worlds. In "Wailing Moon," a wife learns a shocking secret after her husband's death, realizing he was never the man she thought him to be. Set in the United States and Taiwan, "Snow Blind" is a multigenerational triptych that portrays the consequences of spiritual malaise, and in "Brightly Shines the Stars Tonight," a general wrestles with issues of memory and self-perception in the final moments before his execution. Guo Songfen's stories play with the hazards of miscommunication, the malevolence of human will, the arbitrary nature of fate, and the burden of historical circumstance. As the general discovers, life is a game of chess, the outcome of which is never certain though it might be logically designed. Showcasing the best of Taiwan's modernist style, these stories are not only an indictment of the human condition but also a powerful comment on the experience of postretrocession Taiwan.