Taiwan Humanities Lecture Event: Ghost Town: Exploring the Liaison Between Fiction and Autobiography
Thursday, October 27th, 2022
4:30PM – 6:00PM EDT
Linder Commons
1957 E Street, Room 602
Washington, D.C., District of Columbia
About the Book
Listed in the New York Times’ 2022 Booklist, “33 Works of Fiction and Poetry Coming This Fall,” Kevin Chen’s Ghost Town won multiple literary awards after its release in Taiwan in 2019. It has been translated into English, Korean, Vietnamese, Italian, and other languages.
The story is about a small town in Taiwan’s countryside and a family haunted by its own ghosts. The protagonist, Chen Tien-Hong, has just been released from prison after killing his boyfriend, and he returns from Berlin to his desolate hometown, Yongjing, in Changhua County, the same place he fled years ago to escape from family expectations and seek acceptance as a gay man. He arrives during the Ghost Festival, a traditional Taiwanese festival in which it is said that the gates of hell are wide open, adding hellish elements to Chen’s and his five sisters’ lives. The story is told through a number of voices–both living and dead–and moves back and forth through time. As the story evolves, readers come closer to the crux of the family’s dysfunction and piece together why Chen committed the murder.
About
Author
Kevin Chen, began his career as an actor, starring in Taiwanese and German films such as Ghosted, Kung Bao Huhn, and Global Player. Now a writer based in Berlin, Germany, he has published several novels and short story collections, including Attitude, Flower from Fingernail, Ghosts by Torchlight, Rebellious Berlin, and Three Ways to Get Rid of Allergies.
Discussant
Dr. Yu-Min (Claire) Chen, Dr. Yu Min (Claire) Chen is Visiting Assistant Professor at University of Maryland College Park. Dr. Chen received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Indiana University Bloomington and minor in literary and film Theory. Her primary research interests include Comparative Literature, memory studies (autobiography), modernism, transnational writings, travel writing, Asian American literature (literature of Diaspora), and film studies.Moderator
Moderator
Dr. Liana Chen, is Associate Professor of Chinese Literature and International Affairs at the George Washington University. Dr. Chen is the author of Staging for the Emperors: A History of Qing Court Theatre, 1683-1923 (Cambria Press, 2021). Her areas of teaching and research focus on Chinese drama and theatre, Chinese literature of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and Taiwanese theatre, literature and film.
