Schoolgirl romance and female same-sex love in Eileen Chang’s Tongxue shaonian dou bujian: toward a tortured and tortuous Po’s narrative

Abstract

"Eileen Chang's autobiographical Tongxue shaonian dou bujian, which was published in Taiwan and China in 2004, has aroused debates about whether the work is authentic or not; it has also aroused the “Chang-fever” revealed in various cultural products. One reason readers suspect that this is not actually written by Chang is the obvious homoerotic description. This is in direct contrast to the fact that readers’ voyeuristic interest has mostly centered on Eileen Chang’s two heterosexual romances and has neglected the possibility of her representation of same-sex love relationship in the subsequent “Chang-fever”. Many scholars in Chang studies have even written articles from seemingly objective positions to prove that the heterosexual anecdotes in her novels did occur in her life, so that it has become a convention in Chang studies to connect her real life and her novels primarily through her heterosexual experience. However, not surprisingly, the homosexual description in Tongxue shaonian dou bujian has rarely been discussed in Chang studies either in Taiwan or China"