Leaving Taboos behind: Notes on Two Novels by Chen Ran and Lin Bai

While Virginia Woolf (1929) considered autobiographism a dead end, some contemporary Chinese writers, like Chen Ran 陈染 (b. 1962), Hai Nan 海男 (b. 1962), Hong Ying 虹影 (b. 1962), Lin Bai 林白 (b. 1958), and Xu Xiaobin 徐小斌 (b. 1953) make the most of it as a starting point. The two best known novels by Chen Ran and Lin Bai – namely “A Private Life” (Siren shenghuo 私人生活) (Chen Ran 1996) and “A One-Person War” (Yi ge ren de zhanzheng 一个人的战争) (Lin Bai 1997c) – provide a fitting example of these writers’ use of autobiographism and outspokenness. The above-mentioned women writers embody the core of the so-called ‘Individualized’ Writing (gerenhua xiezuo 个人化写作), a literary tendency which found fertile soil for flourishing in the pluralistic context of the 1990’s. This paper analyses the two above-mentioned novels in terms of narrative structure and social significance since they are both representative of the main characteristics of the authors and offer a wide range of clues to their approach to literature.