Qiu Miaojin

Qiu Miaojin (Chinese: 邱妙津; 29 May 1969 – 25 June 1995), also romanized as Chiu Miao-chin, was a Taiwanese novelist. She is best known for her 1994 novel Notes of a Crocodile. Qiu's works are "frequently cited as classics",[1] and her unapologetically lesbian[2] sensibility has had a profound and lasting influence on LGBT literature in Taiwan.

In this Chinese name, the family name is Qiū.
Qiu Miaojin
邱妙津
Native name
邱妙津
Born(1969-05-29)29 May 1969
Changhua County, Taiwan
Died25 June 1995(1995-06-25) (aged 26)
Paris, France
OccupationNovelist, short story writer, filmmaker
LanguageChinese (Taiwan)
NationalityTaiwanese
Alma materTaipei First Girls' High School, National Taiwan University, University of Paris VIII
Period1989–1995
GenreLiterary fiction, autobiography
Literary movementLGBT literature
Notable worksNotes of a Crocodile, Last Words from Montmartre
Notable awardsChina Times Literature Award, Central Daily News Short Story Prize, United Literature Association Award
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese邱妙津
Simplified Chinese邱妙津

Biography

Originally from Changhua County in western Taiwan, Qiu Miaojin attended the prestigious Taipei First Girls' High School and National Taiwan University, where she graduated with a major in psychology. She worked as a counselor and later as a reporter at the weekly magazine The Journalist. In 1994, she moved to Paris, where she pursued graduate studies in clinical psychology and feminism at University of Paris VIII, studying with philosopher Hélène Cixous.[3]

Qiu died by suicide at age 26. Most accounts suggest that she stabbed herself with a kitchen knife.[4][5]

Writing

Qiu Miaojin's writing is influenced by the non-narrative structures of avant-garde and experimental film as well as European and Japanese literary modernisms.[1] Her novels contain camera angles and ekphrasis in response to European art cinema, including allusions to directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Theo Angelopoulos, Derek Jarman, and Jean-Luc Godard. During her time in Paris, Qiu directed a short film titled Ghost Carnival.[6] Her works as a filmmaker are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.[7]

Her best-known work is Notes of a Crocodile,[8] for which she was posthumously awarded the China Times Literature Award in 1995.[1] The main character's nickname, Lazi, is the direct source of a key slang term for "lesbian" in Chinese.[9] Notes of a Crocodile was published in 1994, amid a Taiwanese media frenzy surrounding lesbians, including an incident in which a TV journalist secretly filmed patrons at a lesbian bar without their consent, resulting in some suicides, and the group suicide of two girls, rumored to have been lesbians, from the elite high school attended by several characters in the novel and by Qiu herself. Along with her final work before her death, Last Words from Montmartre, the novel has been widely described as "a cult classic."[10][11][12]

Last Words From Montmartre is an epistolary novel that comprises 20 letters that can be read in any order, drawing on the notion of musical indeterminacy. Its prose appears to "blur distinctions between personal confession and lyric aphorism" according to a review in Rain Taxi.[13] Dated between 27 April 1995, and 17 June 1995, about a week before the author killed herself, the letters begin with the dedication: "For dead little Bunny, and Myself, soon dead." It has been described as a work of relational art and noted for the required presence of the reader, "a 'you' to narrate to" that is a signature of Qiu's works.[14]

In 2007, a two-volume set of Qiu's diaries was published posthumously.[15]

Legacy

Qiu has been recognized as a literary national treasure and counterculture icon,[16][17] as well as described as a "martyr" in the movement for LGBT rights in Taiwan.[18] Her works are taught in high schools and colleges in Taiwan and have "become a literary model for many aspiring writers".[16] Luo Yijun's book Forgetting Sorrow (遣悲懷) was written in her memory. Moreover, Taiwanese writer Li Kotomi explicitly cites Qiu's Notes of a Crocodile as an inspiration for her 2017 novel Solo Dance.[19] Queer Sinophone scholar Fran Martin writes:

Qiu Miaojin is Taiwan's best-known lesbian author. ... Qiu's fiction has sometimes been accused of being unduly 'negative' about lesbian experience; however, her status as a public lesbian and intellectual and the emotional honesty and intensity of her writing make her a figure of enduring significance for lesbian readers of Chinese everywhere.[20]

In 2017, her life and work became the subject of a documentary produced by Radio Television Hong Kong and directed by Evans Chan.[21][22]

Bibliography

Novels
  • Notes of a Crocodile《鱷魚手記》 (1994) - translated by Bonnie Huie (New York Review Books Classics, 2017)
  • Last Words from Montmartre 《蒙馬特遺書》 (1996) - translated by Ari Larissa Heinrich (New York Review Books Classics, 2014)
  • Letters from Montmartre (1996) - excerpt translated by Howard Goldblatt[23] ISBN 978-0-8248-2652-9

Short stories
  • "Platonic Hair" (1990) - translated by Fran Martin[24] ISBN 978-0-231-13841-3

See also

References
  1. Martin, Fran; Heinrich, Ari Larissa (2006-07-31). Embodied Modernities: Corporeality, Representation, and Chinese Cultures. University of Hawaii Press. pp. 177–178. ISBN 978-0-8248-2963-6.
  2. Sang, Tze-Lan D (2003), The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China, University of Chicago Press, p. 159, ISBN 0-226-73480-3
  3. "Taiwanese novelist who killed herself in Paris at 26, Qiu Miaojin, remembered and reassessed in RTHK film". South China Morning Post. Retrieved June 11, 2017.
  4. 劉, 建華 (2007). "從偽裝到自白——邱妙津的"女同"認同之路". www.fgu.edu.tw. Archived from the original on 2020-02-22. Retrieved 2022-10-26. "1995年，邱妙津以一把水果刀刺入胸部，結束了自己二十六歲的生命。"
  5. 傅, 婷婷 (2016). "爱在蒙马特高地". 夏日阅读 世界的另一个入口 (28). "1995年6月，刚过完26岁生日不久，邱妙津就像是玩了一个大大的游戏，选择了在巴黎的留学生宿舍用水果刀刺胸自杀。"
  6. "Qiu Miaojin". Words Without Borders. Retrieved June 11, 2017.
  7. "Qiu Miaojin". Paper Republic. Retrieved June 11, 2017.
  8. "Qiu Miaojin's Survival Guide". The Millions. Retrieved October 10, 2012.
  9. Heinrich, Ari Larissa (7 May 2017). "Consider the Crocodile: Qiu Miaojin's Lesbian Bestiary". The Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved June 11, 2017.
  10. "PEN Translation Fund: Bonnie Huie, Excerpts from Qiu Miaojin's Notes of a Crocodile". PEN American Center. Retrieved January 3, 2013.
  11. "'Cult Classic of Taiwanese Lesbian Literature' Now Excerpted In English, Available Online". Autostraddle. Retrieved October 10, 2012.
  12. "Last Words From Montmartre". Retrieved February 5, 2016.
  13. Mar, Jenn (2 December 2014). "Last Words from Montmartre". Rain Taxi. Retrieved June 25, 2017.
  14. Heinrich, Ari Larissa (7 May 2017). "Consider the Crocodile: Qiu Miaojin's Lesbian Bestiary". The Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved June 11, 2017.
  15. 邱妙津 (女) (2007). 邱妙津日記 (in Chinese). Ink印刻岀版有限公司. ISBN 978-986-6873-50-8.
  16. Chiang, H. (2012-12-11). Transgender China. Palgrave Macmillan US. pp. 161–165. ISBN 978-1-349-34320-1.
  17. "PEN Translation Fund: Bonnie Huie on translating Qiu Miaojin". PEN American Center. Retrieved January 3, 2013.
  18. "Taiwanese novelist who killed herself in Paris at 26, Qiu Miaojin, remembered and reassessed in RTHK film". South China Morning Post. Retrieved June 11, 2017.
  19. himani (2022-05-24). "Li Kotomi's "Solo Dance" Is Haunted by Death and Literature". Autostraddle. Retrieved 2022-10-27.
  20. Gerstner, David A. (2006-03-01). Routledge International Encyclopedia of Queer Culture. Routledge. p. 396. ISBN 978-1-136-76181-2.
  21. "Qiu Miaojin". Paper Republic. Retrieved June 11, 2017.
  22. "Taiwanese novelist who killed herself in Paris at 26, Qiu Miaojin, remembered and reassessed in RTHK film". South China Morning Post. Retrieved June 11, 2017.
  23. In J. Lau and H. Goldblatt (Ed. & Trans.), The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007
  24. in F. Martin (Ed. & Trans.), Angelwings: Contemporary Queer Fiction from Taiwan. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2003.

Further reading
  • "A Crocodile in Paris," by Ankita Chakraborty https://longreads.com/2018/06/07/a-crocodile-in-paris-the-queer-classics-of-qiu-miaojin/
  • "Afterword," by Ari Larissa Heinrich, in Last Words from Montmartre, by Qiu Miaojin, translated by Ari Larissa Heinrich. New York: New York Review Books, 2014. ISBN 978-1-59017-725-9
  • "Begin Anywhere: Transgender and Transgenre Desire in Qiu Miaojin's Last Words from Montmartre," by Ari Larissa Heinrich, in Transgender China: Histories and Cultures, ed. Howard Chiang. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012. ISBN 978-0-230-34062-6, WorldCat
  • "Stigmatic Bodies: The Corporeal Qiu Miaojin," in Embodied Modernities: Corporeality, Representation, and Chinese Cultures eds. Fran Martin and Larissa Heinrich. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-8248-2963-6
  • Martin, Fran. "Situating Sexualities: Queer Representation in Taiwanese Fiction, Film, and Public Culture," Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-962-209-619-6
  • Sang, Tze-Lan D. The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. ISBN 0-226-73478-1
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