The Membranes: A Novel (Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan)

by Ta-wei Chi

Ari Larissa Heinrich (Translator)

It is the late twenty-first century, and Momo is the most celebrated dermal care technician in all of T City. Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape devastating climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor. Momo prefers to keep to herself, and anyway she’s too busy for other relationships: her clients include some of the city’s best-known media personalities. But after meeting her estranged mother, she begins to explore her true identity, a journey that leads to questioning the bounds of gender, memory, self, and reality.

First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes—heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies—into a sensitive portrait of one young woman’s quest for self-understanding. Predicting everything from fitness tracking to social media saturation, this visionary and sublime novel stands out for its queer and trans themes. The Membranes reveals the diversity and originality of contemporary speculative fiction in Chinese, exploring gender and sexuality, technological domination, and regimes of capital, all while applying an unflinching self-reflexivity to the reader’s own role. Ari Larissa Heinrich’s translation brings Chi’s hybrid punk sensibility to all readers interested in books that test the limits of where speculative fiction can go.

• ISBN10: 0231195710
• ISBN13: 9780231195713
• Publish Date: 1 June 2021
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Columbia University Press
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 168
• Language: English

Reviews

[nannah]

The Membranes, a Taiwanese sci-fi classic, was first published in 1995, about a decade after martial law was lifted and people began to experiment with art and literature and, according to the translator, create a kind of punk culture. I strongly recommend reading the translator's notes after finishing the novel — they gave me a much greater appreciation for the book, not only because I then had the background information, but because some of the novel's structural and stylistic choices were explained and discussed. It all kind of came together. In the most clichéd of expressions, my mind kind of exploded. This book is good.

Content warnings:
- sexual assault and rape
- forced sexual reassignment surgery
- organ harvesting
- pedophilia
- cannibalism

Content warnings:
- almost every character is part of the LGBT community
- Momo can strongly be read as being aromantic
- Momo is also disabled, the survivor of a deadly childhood virus, during which she needed several surgeries and organ transplants
- Momo can also strongly be read as being trans ("it was just an annoying bit of flesh")

In the late 21st-century, Momo is the best dermal care technician in T City, one of the many undersea domed cities humanity has now retreated to in the face of climate change. Corporations run the world and function on cyborg slavery. Momo keeps to herself and prefers it that way, but when she meets the mother she hasn't heard from in years, her sense of self, and the world around her, unravels.

I'll be honest, in the beginning and throughout much of the middle, I thought the writing was a bit clumsy, especially the dialogue. But the ideas were haunting. In my notes I have written, "My eyes are wide open, and I'm just over-examining everything, thinking 'what could that mean??'" Even though the book was written in the 90s, the author predicted so much about our current society and technologies correctly, it's wild.

And then in the second half I was convinced the text needed a bit more refining, because it read like a bunch of notes instead of prose — and then I was convinced it was the translation that was clumsy. But reading the translator's notes (because, unfortunately, I blamed the author and the translator for things I should've picked up myself in the text) cleared up why the prose began to unravel into this sort of stream-of-consciousness kind of messy narration, and I began to see the genius of it. While it doesn't seem that way, every detail in this book is very deliberate. It's so difficult not to spoil everything in this review! I'm not even sure what more I can say.

I guess, if you can get a hold of this book, read it!