[Beyond DUNIA] Review of Chen Sihong’s Ghost Town: Who Gets to Tell the Stories of Asian Women

By Jo Goeun (Translator, Administrative Specialist)

For women who have rarely been granted the chance to speak in their own voices, the right to speak is quite literally an opportunity and a form of power. Yet recalling and articulating one’s experiences can itself be unbearably painful. And if no one else but oneself can leave that story behind in the world, the sense of isolation can be overwhelming. It becomes even lonelier when it feels as though no one else could possibly understand that story. In such moments, the ability to lean on companions who have occupied similar positions and endured similar experiences may offer some relief.

Ghost Town (2023), an autobiographical novel by Taiwanese gay writer Chen Sihong, moves back and forth between the narrator’s childhood in Yongjing—a rural village dominated by anti-communist ideology and patriarchy in the 1980s—and the present, when the siblings reunite in their hometown after being scattered for years. The narrator, Chen Tianhong, is the youngest child, born after five older sisters and an older brother. He grows up under the care of a patriarchal grandmother who values only the eldest grandson, a weak-willed father, and a strong-willed mother.

Aware of his homosexuality from an early age, Tianhong suffers homophobic violence at home, at school, and within the village. In a society where extreme son preference within the family, pervasive sexism and authoritarianism in schools and villages, and the state’s rigid anti-communist policies are deeply entangled, homophobia often appears intertwined with misogyny or manifests as a tool for identifying supposed communists. As a result, Tianhong is confined to a small room with his sisters and scolded by his grandmother, beaten by teachers for alleged misconduct with male classmates, and even witnesses his mother report a neighborhood boy he loved as a communist.

Eventually expelled from both home and school, alienated by his village and the state, Tianhong leaves for distant Germany. Yet even there, he encounters racial discrimination and returns to his hometown in a state akin to a formless ghost. Still, his own suffering is described only briefly, as contextual background for the patriarchal society his family inhabited. The novel instead focuses on the lives of his sisters, whom he depicts from the position of a fellow minority—similar to yet different from himself in the discrimination they endured.

In a society that allows women nothing beyond the role of the virtuous wife and devoted mother, the sisters struggle in their own ways to carve out a place for themselves. The eldest sister, Sumei, skilled with her hands, earns money early on in a garment factory. The second sister, Suri, an avid reader, becomes a civil servant. The capable third sister, Suqing, enters an elite university and marries a famous news anchor. The fourth sister, Sujie, strategically marries into wealth in search of survival.

By the time Tianhong returns from Germany, however, all of the sisters are middle-aged and deeply disillusioned with their lives. Even Suqing, despite her prestigious education, finds Taiwan’s patriarchal system—particularly the institution of marriage—far too rigid to overcome through individual effort alone. They endure their husbands’ business failures, reckless behavior, and violence, yet find it difficult to choose divorce. A male-centered society denies women opportunities to exercise their abilities, pushes them into marriage, confines them within the household, and deprives them of the chance to build economic independence. Trapped between a sense of duty to preserve the family and their own economic powerlessness, they rage against their husbands and society while continuing to endure their circumstances.

When the siblings, once dispersed with aspirations of finding their own lives, reunite in their hometown empty-handed, Tianhong feels that this village is truly a “ghost town.” Yongjing remains a place ruled by the ghosts of a bygone era; a place where the spirits of deceased family members linger; and a place where those drained of vitality by arduous lives drift back as ghosts themselves. They seem to have lost all optimism and ambition.

Do people who have endured so much hardship and disappointment have the capacity to listen to the pain of others—especially that of their siblings? Had they fixated on calculating who received more parental recognition, there might truly have been no hope. Instead, Tianhong and his first, second, and third sisters share familiar childhood foods and take turns speaking and listening to one another. Having long shared experiences of discrimination, they already sensed that their suffering was fundamentally connected. Thus, even upon hearing fragmentary news that Tianhong had killed his male lover in Germany and been imprisoned, none of the sisters blamed him. Rather, they were reminded that they too were trapped in circumstances from which escape might require killing their husbands.

When they finally gather together, they begin to understand how Tianhong became a “ghost,” how the fifth sister, Chaomei, lost her life, why the fourth sister, Sujie, remains shut inside the house, and why their father cannot leave even in death.

Sharing wounds among marginalized people is often more difficult than expected. When discrimination takes so many forms, focusing solely on the differences—on the fact that others do not experience the same oppression that I do—can obscure how these injustices are deeply interconnected. In this sense, Ghost Town holds unique value as a detailed portrayal of Taiwanese women’s lives from the perspective of another marginalized subject. The novel is sustained by the gay younger brother’s love and determination to record, as fully and vividly as possible, the diverse lives of his sisters after being expelled from all roots himself. Within these portrayals lies the image of women who, despite living as frustrated and angry housewives in a conservative Asian society, continue to worry about and long for their gay younger brother studying abroad.

Because they looked at and remembered one another, they are no longer vague, lifeless ghosts by the novel’s end. Through this relationship, the novel suggests that Asian women need not bear the burden of historical documentation alone. Instead, by listening to how other marginalized people depict them, it becomes possible to imagine a history built together.

For a long time, Asian women in film and literature were exoticized by Western men or instrumentalized by Asian men, making the question of how to represent Asian women without distortion a subject of fierce debate. From feminist critiques of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Zhang Yimou’s Ju Dou for romanticizing male exploitation of Asian women, to works like Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko and Maggie Kang’s K-Pop Demon Hunters, where women of Asian descent attempt to reclaim and represent their own past and present, efforts to move beyond the image of the submissive, endlessly enduring “traditional woman” have continued. If such representation were to extend beyond the voices of those directly affected and into collaboration with fellow marginalized subjects, even more diverse and compelling stories of Asian women could emerge.

Jo Goeun has translated numerous works on feminism and queer theory and currently works as a certified translation and administrative specialist.