Since 2010, four Taiwanese women writers—Hung Yuchun (洪愛珠), Chen Yu-chin (陳又津), Yang Shuang-zi (楊双子), and Li Kotomi (李琴峰)—have emerged on Taiwan’s literary scene. These writers share a few common characteristics. They explore cultural memory shaped by Taiwan’s modern history and social issues, often from a female perspective or through relationships among women. This group of writers inherits cultural memories from their families or local communities in their hometowns. Frequently, they narrate cultural memories based on their coming-of-age experiences. This type of cultural memory constructs historical narratives rooted in everyday experiences, such as food, romance, and the streetscape of one’s neighborhood. These historical narratives also draw from family sagas or subcultural communities. In portraying daily life, their works tackle broader social and cultural issues, including aging, ethnicity, race, gender identity, urban renewal, cybertechnology, migration, and nationhood. In examining these issues, their works wrestle with questions like “Who am I?”, “Who raised me?”, “What should I do with my family legacy and my native culture?”, and “How do I intervene in the past and future of my native and host cultures?”

Rather than rejecting or disavowing their cultural heritage, most of these writers rewrite and reappropriate it. This reappropriation reimagines history and shifts its ideological focus. History becomes the writing of women’s embodied experiences in both public and private spaces. By recollecting recent pasts—such as Taiwan’s colonial period, postwar migration from mainland China, cross-border marriages, and international labor recruitment between Taiwan and other East Asian and Southeast Asian countries since the 1960s—they articulate a complex, localized Taiwanese consciousness. While mapping out a material and hybrid Taiwanese culture, these writers also confront social and cultural inequalities. Occasionally, they reflect upon Taiwan from the perspective of an outsider or someone who has chosen to leave. These writers also experiment with genres and language to revise cultural memories and concepts of nationhood, challenging Sinocentric, masculinist, heteronormative, and neoliberalist perspectives.

Hung Yuchun’s collection of essays Old School Girls’ Shopping Route (老派少女購物路線, 2021) is primarily written in memory of the two maternal figures in her family: her mother and maternal grandmother. The majority of the book focuses on Hung’s memories of them, especially their shopping trips and their preparation of food for an extended family and employees of the family business. Through these memories, Hung creates a gastronomic cartography of frequented shops or locations in Taiwan and abroad.

Chen Yu-chin’s works often address contemporary social issues through fantastical elements and dark humor. Her narrative style highlights the absurdity of social reality and the cynical yet resilient responses of the disenfranchised. Her nonfiction book Taipei People to Be (準台北人, 2023), a parody of Pai Hsien-yung’s (白先勇) Taipei People (臺北人, 1971), documents the stories of her parents. Her father, a Chinese mainlander who came to Taiwan after 1949, and her mother, of Chinese descent and born and raised in Indonesia, provide the foundation for the book. The book also includes Chen’s interviews with Taiwan’s “new second generation” (新二代), in which clashes or bonds between migrant parents and their Taiwan-born children reveal varying sentiments about an identity that remained ambiguous until recent years. In her other nonfiction work, I Am My Mom’s Pride and Joy (我媽的寶就是我, 2020), female characters play important roles in presenting a different perspective on social issues arising from urban renewal, marriage, and an aging population. In her fictional works—Miss Kublai Khan (少女忽必烈, 2014), Cross-Boundary Communication (跨界通訊, 2018), and Marriage-holic: Short Stories (我有結婚病, 2022)—Chen explores these themes in depth.

Yang Shuang-zi’s writing blends history with popular culture. She created a literary genre called “Taiwan Historical Yuri Fiction” (台灣歷史百合小說), a hybrid of historical fiction and young women’s romance, with works such as The Season When Flowers Bloom (花開時節, 2017), Blossoming Girls of Gorgeous Island (花開少女華麗島, 2018), and Taiwan Travelogue (台灣漫遊錄, 2020). In another novel, No. 1, Siwei Street (四維街一號, 2023), set in contemporary Taiwan, Yang portrays the romance and friendship among four female college graduates who live in a building that once served as a dormitory for government employees during the colonial period. The novel reimagines the significance of this colonial site through the daily interactions among the female characters.

Li Kotomi’s fictional works frequently explore broader social issues, such as homophobia, racial violence, nationhood, and birth rights, with plots centered around queer romance. Unlike the previous writers, her stories are mostly set outside of Taiwan and often reflect a retrospective gaze upon the island. Taiwan represents her characters’ ambivalent family ties, traumatic pasts, rediscovered hopes, and national dystopias. Li writes in Japanese and translates her works into Chinese. Solo Dance (獨舞, 2019) focuses on a Taiwanese émigré in Japan struggling with her past of discrimination and sexual violence in Taiwan. The Island Where Red Spider Lilies Bloom (彼岸花盛開之島, 2022) presents a women-governed utopia where socialism is practiced. Starry Night (星月夜, 2023) touches on racial discrimination and the surveillance and oppression faced by Uyghurs in China. Her most recent work, Celebration of Life (生之祝禱, 2024), explores biopolitical control and engages in difficult philosophical reflections on human free will regarding one’s right to be born or not to be born.

Editor’s Note: This report was originally presented at a forum organized by Nicolai Volland for the Modern Language Association convention held in New Orleans, January 9–12, 2025. Speakers included Chialan Sharon Wang, E.K. Tan, Wendy Wan-ting Wang, Wen-chi Li, Chia-rong Wu, Kate Costello, and Nicolai Volland. Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang served as discussant. After the convention, the presenters agreed to share their texts with Taiwan Lit. Some participants, however, were unable to submit their contributions due to various circumstances.