NOTES OF A CROCODILE

By Qiu Miaojin

Translated by Bonnie Huie

304 pp. New York Review Books. $15.95.

“One day it dawned on me as if I were writing my own name for the first time,” the narrator of “Notes of a Crocodile” declares in the early pages. “Cruelty and mercy are one and the same.” This way of reframing dualities within a binary system — and pummeling that system — is the soul of this thrillingly transgressive coming-of-age story by the Taiwanese writer Qiu Miaojin. Bonnie Huie’s translation is nothing short of remarkable — loving, even; one gets the sense that great pains have been taken to preserve the voice behind this lush, ontological masterwork.

Set in Taipei in the late 1980s, directly following the cessation of martial law, the novel follows a wry, soulful and somewhat miserable young woman nicknamed Lazi, who spends much of her time alone, reading, writing and decoding her obsessions deep into the night while somehow scraping by at one of Taiwan’s most esteemed universities. Lazi falls in love with her slightly older female classmate Shui Ling, a love she strains to resist and equates with a crime. The two embark on a tantric, mostly agonizing battle of wills, alternately courting and rejecting each other. “My world is one of tainted sustenance. I love my own kind — womankind,” Lazi contends in one of many letters to Shui Ling. “You were like a realm that exposed me. … You tore me open and exposed the man inside.” Qiu Miaojin’s energetic prose leaves a gratifying welt, marking the reader with the violence of her intelligence. Lazi makes a series of friends — all of them quick-witted, mournful and queer, but each uniquely so. Qiu rejects the notion of queerness as a single experience, showcasing its multitudes instead. Labels are never used to identify the desires of these characters; we are forced to think beyond them — to see the self as something of an abyss: “Hey, we should found a gender-free society and monopolize all the public restrooms!” This idea of the unfixed, fragmented self is mirrored by the structure of the book, which hovers between genres. Composed of Lazi’s eight notebooks and described as a survival guide, an array of literary forms conspire together: aphorisms, fragments and allegorical interludes about crocodiles who wear human suits when they go outside and symbolize the queer body. These sections depicting a world in which straight people are deeply attracted to those who deviate from the heterosexual paradigm, while also fearing and ultimately wanting to kill them. Qiu deftly exposes the interplay between hate and desire, illustrating how the compulsion to prey on queer and gender nonconforming people is often born of repressed desire.

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First published in 1994, “Notes of a Crocodile” is in many ways a futuristic text, as it contains conversations about identity that are happening now — and ones that have yet to. It is refreshing to read a novel that so frankly examines patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, gender normativity and capitalism — especially one that howls so freely with pain. Lazi and her friends are philosophers who feel. They convey the rich and vital role of emotion in any revolution. Like gender and sexuality, the depths of pleasure and especially of sorrow are revealed here on a spectrum. Qiu reminds us that “positive” examples of the homosexual in literature and pop culture can be neutering and dehumanizing, as they often speak more to the institutions that despise them. Lazi exhibits moments of bliss and epiphany in a more complicated emotional terrain — the joy is in her mind, her pleasure in thinking, talking and writing — especially writing what she is unable to say.