Exiles at Home: Stories

"Eight of the nine stories in this collection were published in the sixties, before Ch’en’s incarceration from 1968 to 1975. Yet his sympathy with socialist ideals already comes through. At the very least, the stories evince his conviction that fiction should be based in social conscience. Several are highly critical of the perils of intellectualism, capitalism, materialism, and U.S. influence on Taiwan. One directly denounces the American-Vietnam War. Some critics see some of Ch’en’s earliest stories as overly preoccupied with romantic nihilists, but I read them as a rebuke to the leisure classes. What’s powerful is the character development in certain stories, as when a sister struggles after her anarchist-nihilist brother’s suicide. One story, “A Couple of Generals,” brings together an older mainlander and a Taiwanese woman, a subject Ch’en treated elsewhere as well. Ch’en directly confronts the dictatorial KMT rule and the White Terror in later, post-incarceration works, such as “Bell Flower,” Zhao Nandong , and “Night Mist.” Ch’en’s stories capture trauma in ways that connect the dots between oppressive systems and the particulars of personal and historical traumas. Several stories also connect the traumas on Taiwan with the mainland, other parts of Asia, and the United States. The collection’s most powerful story, “Roses in June,” explores at least three layers of trauma suffered by a black G.I. Destabilized by killing innocent civilians in Vietnam, Barney goes to Taiwan on R&R. He quickly gets involved with a bar girl named Emmy. Having been sold as a young girl, Emmy was a slave like Barney’s ancestors. He realizes he loves her, but she also reminds him of a little girl he murdered in Vietnam, and his PTSD from the war lands him in a psychiatric hospital. Talking with his doctor, he recounts his PTSD from Vietnam, but also childhood trauma, and the trauma of the racism he endured in the United States. Serving as a soldier, he explains, made him feel equal to white folks. In addition to his internalized racism, we see his own racism toward Asians when he says that he couldn’t tell one from another. His childhood trauma emerges when he recalls his mother working as a prostitute serving white men, as Emmy does, and his father’s beating her when they would return home after a John left. Still, despite all the trauma, the story is also a love story. Barney and Emmy are both misfits, and their love heals them. When Barney is in the hospital, Emmy brings him a rose every day. And when he gets out, he marries her. Between 1951 and 1965 the United States gave $1.4 billion to Taiwan. So with “Roses in June,” Ch’en was part of a tiny minority in Taiwan who dared to question the American-Vietnam War. Ch’en also uses parody to mock U.S. influence. One story’s protagonist blindly follows Western intellectual trends through her lovers, each one representing a particular “ism,” existentialism, positivism, materialism, and finally research physics. In addition to U.S. military and economic aid to Taiwan, U.S. culture exerted a deep influence through literature, music, and consumer goods. In terms of literature, many writers also studied in America, often at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. “One Day in the Life of a White-Collar Worker” exemplifies Ch’en’s critique of capitalism and the Americanization of values in Taiwan. What triggers the story is the protagonist’s fury at being passed over for a promotion. The narrative present begins the day after he has quit in anger because the position has gone to the nephew of his company’s head. Thinking that he’s lost everything he’s worked for, he rues his years of dedication to the rat race. But the protagonist is no workaholic. He covets a cushier, higher-paid position because he has other aspirations and wants to work less. Back in college he longed to become a filmmaker, and an unfinished experimental film still sits in his closet. He is exploited by the American capitalist system, but he also craves the fruits of capitalism for his own comfort. After paying his dues in other companies, he has risen through the ranks at a prestigious American-controlled company. As a prosperous middle manager (the head of the credit division), he has moved his family to a large comfortable apartment, takes cabs everywhere, and charges this and other costs to his expense account. There’s also a minor sidestory about his affair with a prostitute. Underlying the story is the implication that America has the capital and business savvy to control Taiwan’s economic development. At the same time, the whole company is corrupt, including the protagonist. He processes his own and his bosses’ receipts as if they were business expenses. He then expunges all the records so that the American parent company won’t see them. The story deftly portrays the protagonist and his predicament. In a surprise ending, when the boss’s nephew declines the position, the protagonist rescinds his resignation. His rejection of the rat race was purely circumstantial. Like “Roses in June,” this story humanely portrays a person stuck as a cog in a machine, a ready accomplice to American capitalism."