R.F. Kuang on Diaspora, Language and Shame in 'Taipei Story'

Author R.F. Kuang's seventh novel, Taipei Story, follows a college freshman named Lily during a summer abroad in Taiwan to learn Mandarin. In a conversation with Adam Dalva for LitHub, Kuang explained her focus on a younger protagonist and the intertwined themes of language, shame, and diaspora identity.

Writing a Younger, Messier Protagonist

Kuang, who recently turned 30, said she was excited to write a protagonist a decade younger than herself. Her previous protagonists in the Poppy War trilogy, Babel, and Katabasis had aged alongside her. Lily, she noted, is "book smart, but so amazingly stupid," a dynamic Kuang found fun to explore. This shift reflects the author's own changed perspective. She is no longer nervous about readers misinterpreting her work or questioning her expertise. "Now I would rather be visibly struggling to learn new material and wrestle with difficult concepts," Kuang said. She finds it productive to use a narrating voice for whom "the world makes no sense," especially when that character wrongly believes she understands complex histories and geopolitics.

The Shame of Language Learning

Kuang directly links the experience of shame with bilingualism, particularly for diaspora communities. She cited Doris Sommer’s Bilingual Aesthetics as an influence. The author is interested in how language fluency becomes a tool for "one-upmanship" and a source of embarrassment. "When you go to a Chinese restaurant with a bunch of other Chinese Americans and one of them can just rattle off all the names of dishes on the menu and you can’t even ask for tea, the attitude being signaled is, 'Oh, I’m better than you,'" she explained. This fear of signaling inadequacy often prevents people from speaking at all.

Taipei Story aims to sever the assumed link between ethnicity and language ability. Kuang referenced theorist Rey Chow's critique of the "native speaker" and the "myth of consanguinity." "Language doesn’t come in your blood," Kuang stated. "It is something that is practiced and learned and something that you can be awful at, and also something that you can get better at." She views the language classroom as a "daily exercise in shame and humiliation" that is ultimately productive, a friction necessary for progress.

Airports and the Fantasy of Connection

The novel uses specific locations to explore liminality. Kuang opened the book with Lily landing at Taipei Taoyuan Airport and placed a key emotional climax in an airport lounge. For those existing in multiple cultures, Kuang sees the airport as a "strange space where you’re literally caught in the in-between." The final scene returns to this portal as Lily departs, questioning if she has been transformed.

A central narrative element is the death of Lily's grandfather, which highlights lost connections. Kuang describes a common diaspora fantasy: if one could just go back and speak the language, a deep, truthful connection with elders would be possible. Lily believes mastering Chinese is the only barrier to this connection, but fails to achieve it in time. Kuang subtly challenges this fantasy, noting that "sometimes people don’t want to tell you" their stories. The novel sits in the space of that unresolved longing, where language is both a bridge and an insurmountable wall.