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Li Ang is one of the best-known women writers from Taiwan. Her first novel, The Butcher’s Wife (殺夫Sha Fu 1983), shocked and enthralled with its ground-breaking style and strong feminist theme. “Rouged Sacrifice” (彩妝血祭 “Cai Zhuang Xie Ji”), first published in the collection Everybody Puts Their Joss Sticks in the Beigang Incense Burner (北港香爐人人插 Beigang Xiang Lu Ren Ren Cha 1997), continues with the aggressive style and message that Li Ang has established in her earlier writing. However, in this story Li Ang utilizes the gravity of the trauma related to Taiwan’s 228 Incident to examine the repression of marginalized groups in Taiwan. In recent years the 228 Incident has become more than the initial 1947 uprising and subsequent massacre. It has attached itself to the identity of Taiwanese as a trauma residing in everyone’s consciousness. However, victimhood has traditionally been possessed by male Taiwanese, just as the narratives that remember it have been written by men. In “Rouged Sacrifice” Li Ang examines the repression of women and marginalized groups and redistributes possession of the 228 trauma across society. Through the employment of postmodernist narrative techniques, specifically in relation to Bertolt Brecht, Li presents this repression in a dialectical form, enabling the reader to critically consider the themes presented in the text, as well as contemplate the process of presenting an event such as the 228 Incident amid the distortions that continue to cloud our understanding of the past. Doing so, she contributes to the construction of Taiwan’s national trauma, while questioning this very construction and its connection to society.
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