‘Taipei Story’: Rebecca F Kuang grapples with anxieties of being estranged by and within language

There is no doubt that Rebecca F Kuang is obsessed with language (rightly so). Having recently completed a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University, she also unpacks questions concerning the linguistic realm through fiction. In an earlier novel, Babel, or the Necessity of Violence (2022), she exposed the role of language in erecting and disrupting structures of power in academic institutions steeped in colonialism. But in her most vulnerable novel yet, Kuang grapples with the anxieties of being estranged by and within language. Taipei Story is an invitation to join in on the madness.

A sociocultural odyssey

The book follows the journey of Chinese-American Ivy League freshman Lily Chen, as she ventures on an intensive (and immersive) Chinese language training programme in Taipei over the summer. Lily, like any child of an immigrant family, has been plagued by the curse of not being American enough and simultaneously constantly failing to be authentically Chinese.

“When I reached my gate at Logan Airport, I discovered there were a lot of Chinese American students boarding the United Flight from Boston to Taipei… They looked Chinese, but not Chinese Chinese… Chinese Americans always looked like Chinese people put through the broiler.”

The cultural fracture of feeling more connected to her American-ness while never quite...

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