Sex and irony in Zhang Dachun’s Bildungsroman Wo Meimei

Abstract

Growing up in the juancun 眷村 (soldiers’ villages) communities of Taiwan during the 1980s, contemporary Taiwanese author Zhang Dachun 张大春 (b. 1957) appears to have embraced the postmodern ideas and techniques, drawing inspiration from writers like Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco in his literary work. Since the publication of his novel Da Shuohuangjia 大說謊家 (“The Big Liar,” 1989), Zhang Dachun earned the moniker “the big liar,” and his novels have been described as metafictional, employing a postmodern approach that playfully utilizes signs and symbols to convey meanings or “lies” (Peng 2009).

In 1993, under the pen name Datou Chun 大头春 (“Big-head Spring”), the author published a semi-autobiographical Bildungsroman (qingchun xiaoshuo 青春小說) titled Wo Meimei 我妹妹 (“My Kid Sister”), adopting a sarcastic teenage narrative voice. The novel depicts his own growth, as well as that of his sister, who is eight years younger, within the complex historical and political backdrop of 1980s Taiwan. Throughout the novel, there are numerous references to children’s sexual instincts and behaviors, often reinterpreted through a Freudian lens. These references are intertwined with the author’s personal experiences rooted in contemporary Taiwan’s reality and metafictional discussions on narrative meaning and strategies. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to gather these references and shed light on Zhang Dachun’s reception of postmodernism while reconstructing his distinct “poetics of the lie.”