Rebecca Kuang explores identity through language in ‘Taipei Story’
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Rebecca F Kuang’s novel Taipei Story follows Lily Chen, a Chinese-American student who travels to Taiwan for an immersive Mandarin Chinese language program.
Lily hopes to connect with a part of her identity she feels estranged from, struggling with not being fully accepted as either American or Chinese. Kuang details Lily’s experiences navigating cultural expectations, linguistic challenges, and grief following the death of her grandfather, a man she never truly connected with due to the language barrier.
The author portrays Lily’s journey as a sociocultural exploration, showing how she attempts to build a “Chinese-self” in Taiwan, separate from the one she presents in the United States. Kuang uses humor alongside emotional depth, contrasting this novel with her previous works which often used fantastical settings to explore similar themes of power and belonging. The book is structured around seven chapters, each charting a phase of Lily’s summer experience.
The author also reflects on her own experiences with language and identity as a Tamilian living in India and later studying in the United States. She explains that language can create distance even within one’s own country, noting how her proficiency in English and her upbringing shaped her linguistic experience. Kuang’s work encourages readers to examine the ways language shapes identity, and to recognize that different linguistic selves can coexist.
