Solo Dance by Kotomi Li

“There’s a limit to how much misogyny and heteronomrative bullshit a story can have.”

Solo Dance follows a millennial woman from Taiwan working an office job in Tokyo who feels alienated from her colleagues and their daily conversations about marriage, the economy, and children. Chō, our protagonist, is a lesbian, something she keeps ‘hidden’ from her coworkers. While Chō does hang out with other queer women in lgbtq+ spaces, a traumatic experience causes her to be self-doubting, distrustful of others, and perpetually ashamed. When she opens up to a woman she’s sort of seeing, the latter brutally rejects her, not only blaming Chō for having been attacked but accusing her of having been deceitful (by not having spoken about this before). This leads Chō to spiral further into depression and suicidal ideation, her disconnection further exacerbated by an ‘accident’ that occurs at her workplace. Chō’s arc brought to mind that of Esther Greenwood in <i>Bell Jar</i>, that is to say, things seem to just get worse and worse for her.

As we read of her experiences working and living in Japan as a gay woman, we are also given insight into her teenage years in Taiwan, her slow recognition of her sexuality, her first encounter(s) with women, and that devasting night that resulted in an irrevocable self-disintegration. Chō blames herself for her attack, and not only does she sabotages her relationship with her girlfriend but pushes away one of the few people actively trying to help her. Chō’s uneasy relationship with her sexuality and the physical and emotional violence she experiences over the course of the narrative make for an unrelentingly depressing read.

Throughout the course of her novel, the author links Chō’s experiences to those of Qiu Miaojin and of her fictionalised counterpart, Lazi. Both tonally and thematically Solo Dance shares a lot of similarities with Miaojin’s Notes of a Crocodile: both works interrogate notions of normalcy and alterity by exploring the experiences of women whose sexuality does not conform to societal norms.
Whereas Miaojin’s writing has a more cynical and satirical edge to it, Solo Dance is mostly just depressing. Immeasurably depressing. I knew going into it that the novel would not be a happy read, but, dio mio, for such a short read this book sure is brimming with queer pain & suffering. Because of this, I’m afraid I found Solo Dance to be a very one-note read. Sure, the realities it explores are sadly realistic, but, the storytelling has this flat quality to it that made it hard for me to become immersed in what I was reading. I can’t pinpoint whether it is the author’s style or the translation at fault, but while reading this I felt not so much transported into the story as merely…well, as if I was ‘just’ reading a text that didn’t quite elicit any strong responses beyond finding r*pe, lesbophobia, and suicidal ideation upsetting to read of. The story never reeled me in, which is a pity as the topics it explores are ones close to my heart (i am a lesbian and grew up in a very catholic and not particularly lgbtq+ friendly country).
The dialogues were a mixture of clumsy and dry and some of Chō’s internal monologues struck me as trying too hard to mimic Lazi’s brand of nihilistic angst. Other times it just sounded off, unnatural (“is the stigmatization of my sexuality the source of all my misfortune? This illogical question had plagued her for a long time”, “her rational thoughts returned to life and began to talk to her”). The narrative also seemed to go way out of its way in order to make Chō suffer, and while I can sometimes buy into the type of story where one character experiences trauma after trauma (a little life), here I didn’t. A lot of the interactions she has with others either struck me as unlikely or just plain unbelievable (from the words spoken by the woman who ‘rejects’ her to her encounter with another suicidal queer woman).

If you are interested in reading this book I still recommend you give it a shot (just bear in mind ‘tis dreary affair).

my rating: ★ ★ ½

NOTES OF A CROCODILE BY QIU MIAOJIN

“Cruelty and mercy are one and the same. Existence in this world relegates good and evil to the exact same status. Cruelty and evil are only natural, and together they are endowed with half the power and half the utility in this world. It seems I’m going to have to learn to be crueler if I’m to become the master of my own fate.”

On the one hand, this was certainly ahead of its time, on the other, I found Qiu Miaojin’s brand of angsty nihilism somewhat trite.

Originally published in 1994, Notes of a Crocodile is now considered by many a ‘cult classic’. I was certainly surprised and struck by Miaojin’s modernist style and by how on point her discussions surrounding gender, identity, and sexuality were.
In many ways the narrator’s inner conflict regarding her sexuality, desire, and otherness brought to mind Giovanni’s Room, but Miaojin’s storytelling is far more experimental and uneven than James Baldwin’s one. Notes of a Crocodile‘s unconventional structure, while certainly unique, does come at the expense of its characters, plot, and story. While I was reading this I couldn’t help but be reminded of Mieko Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs, a novel of hers I did not particularly care for (heaven is so much better in my humble opinion).
Similarly to Breasts and Eggs, Notes of a Crocodile, which is set in 1980s Taipei, seems to be made up of vignettes, many of them featuring one-note secondary characters going on long tangents or monologues in which they vent or harp on about their vices, how existing in a society sucks, how love will inevitably end in pain and violence.
Their voices, more often than not, struck me as exceedingly self-dramatising. They try really hard to paint themselves as these edgy, grungy, tragic figures who are more cottoned on than the rest on the ills of the world. I just found their neverending speeches to be angsty, puerile even. I also kept mixing up some of the characters as they do seem to express themselves very similarly to one another, which was weird given that our narrator when reflecting on her ‘friends’, would attribute to them distinctive characteristics (which they themselves never show). Speaking of, these ‘interactions’, which make up most of the narrative, are very repetitive. They usually feature our main character and one other person, and, personally, I would like for the characters to interact more with each other (as opposed to having all of these 1-to-1). It didn’t help that I found them all extremely unlikeable and inconsistent (and not in the, they are human, of course they have incongruent, kind of way). The main narrator, nicknamed Lazi, is horrible. While I could definitely sympathise with her struggles (although it is not clearly stated, she likely suffers from depression, often finding the idea of performing everyday activities overwhelming), I just hated the way she treated the woman she was supposedly in love with. Talk about being manipulative! And, at the risk of using an overused word, nearly every single character in this was toxic af (on the lines of: i will beat the shit out of you because i hate that i love you’…).

Lazi’s pessimistic monologues did little for me. They don’t really add anything to her character that we didn’t already know, nor do they offer any particularly challenging or transgressive ideas.
What did keep me interested was the author’s exploration of her characters’ sexualities and gender identities. Lazi is frustrated by how binary gender identity and expression are made to be in her society. She’s also aware that, unlike more ‘feminine’ presenting lesbians, she will have a harder time ‘passing’.
In recounting Lazi’s experiences as a young lesbian woman in 1980s Taipei Miaojin also touches upon themes of normalcy, alterity, alienation, and loneliness.

Throughout the course of the novel, we hear of these ‘crocodiles’. The media seems obsessed with ‘crocodiles’, who occasionally hide themselves by wearing ‘human’ suits. These crocodiles are a metaphor for queerness, and while I appreciated Miaojin’s commentary on how queer people were perceived and treated in 1980s/90s Taiwan, by the end, this whole crocodile business did feel somewhat overdone.
Overall I have rather mixed feelings towards Notes of a Crocodile. Stylistically, well, I found this novel to be too experimental and abstract for my taste. The wannabe-anarchistic characters got on my nerves and the narrative’s tortured and fatalist tone was rather affected. Yet, I was interested in the author’s social commentary and insights into Taiwan’s lgbtq+ community during the 80s. I could also definitely relate to many of her observations, speculations, and struggles with queerness. One day I may as well revisit this and find myself reassessing my estimation of this work but for the moment, yeah, I can’t say that I was particularly impressed or moved by Notes of a Crocodile.

my rating: ★★★

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