〈Introduction to the Works of
the Cross-Linguistic
Generation Poet Chen Hsiu-hsi〉（陳秀喜）
∕Chen Chü-fei
Abstract
This study, from the perspectives of Postcolonial Theory and Feminism, explores the life trajectory and poetic creation of Chen Hsiu-hsi, a poet of the “Cross-linguistic Generation,” and reveals the linguistic rupture, cultural hybridity, and gender consciousness embedded in her works. Chen Hsiu-hsi was born during the period of Japanese rule; in her early years she composed in Japanese, and after the war she turned to writing in Mandarin Chinese. Her creative trajectory embodies the cultural tension produced by the transformation of colonial language systems.
Through natural imagery (such as “fallen leaves,” “soil,” and “tender leaves”), the poet entrusts questions of identity and memories of the land, demonstrating, within a postcolonial context, both a summons to the motherland and a resistance to cultural hegemony. At the same time, her poetry also profoundly portrays women’s life experiences. Through works such as “Rose” and “Thorn Lock,” she reveals women’s confinement and rebirth under the dual oppression of patriarchy and colonialism, expressing the agency and spirit of resistance of the female subject.
In addition, the temporal ruptures, the return of memory, and the historical trauma within Chen Hsiu-hsi’s poetry also reflect the tensions of multiple narratives in a postcolonial society. This study points out that Chen Hsiu-hsi’s works are not only an important testimony to cross-linguistic writing in the history of Taiwanese poetry, but also a representative case of postcolonial women’s literature. Through the practice of poetry, she demonstrates the characteristic that “lyricism is politics,” tightly interweaving personal life, gender conditions, and the entanglements of cultural forces of the era, thereby shaping a paradigm of women’s poetry with transnational and cross-linguistic significance.
Keywords
Cross-linguistic Generation
Postcolonial Theory
Feminism
Natural Imagery
Cultural Hybridity
Identity Reconstruction
Women’s Literature
I. Life Events and Published Works
1. The Life of Chen Hsiu-hsi
- Birth background: Chen Hsiu-hsi (1921–1991) was born on December 15, 1921, in Hsinchu Prefecture, Taiwan. After reaching one month of age, she was adopted by her foster parents Chen Chin-lai and Li Pi.
- Early education: She studied at Hsinchu Girls’ Public School and, under the arrangement of her adoptive father, also studied classical Chinese and Tang poetry on her own, laying the foundation for her literary development.
- Linguistic awakening: From her teenage years she already displayed linguistic talent, being able to compose poetry, tanka, and haiku in Japanese, and she began publishing works in Japanese in the late 1930s.
- Marriage and life experience: She married in 1942 and traveled with her husband to reside in Shanghai and Hangzhou. During her married life she experienced the loss of a child, marital pressures, and family conflicts. These experiences profoundly influenced the emotional tone of her poetry.
- Postwar turning point: After the end of World War II she returned to Taiwan. Due to changes in language policy, she faced a rupture in literary language. She therefore began to study Chinese on her own and gradually turned to writing in Chinese, rebuilding her literary career.
- Participation in poetry societies: In 1967 she joined the “Li Poetry Society,” and beginning in 1971 she served as its president. She actively supported younger writers and promoted the nativist poetry movement and the creation of women’s poetry.
- Appearance in the Chinese poetry world: In 1971 she published her first Chinese poetry collection, Fallen Leaves, thereby establishing her identity as a Chinese-language poet.
- Creative style and status: Her works center on land, women, and life experience, combining nativist lyricism with social concern. Her poem “Taiwan” was later adapted into the folk song “Formosa (Beautiful Island),” becoming a symbol of the era.
- International recognition: In 1978, her poem “My Pen” won second prize in the International Poetry Award of the National Poetry Association of the United States, demonstrating the transnational value of her creative work.
- Later years and death: She divorced in 1978. In her later years she moved to places such as Guanziling, continuing to write while supporting younger writers. She passed away from illness in Taiwan on February 25, 1991, at the age of seventy.
2. Published Poetry Collections of Chen Hsiu-hsi
Fallen Leaves (1971, Taipei: Li Poetry Journal Press)
—Her first Chinese poetry collection, marking a milestone in her transition from Japanese-language writing to Chinese-language creation.
The Sorrows and Joys of the Tree (1974, Taipei: Li Poetry Journal Press)
—Continuing the imagery of land and nature, deepening lyricism and reflections on life.
Collected Poems of Chen Hsiu-hsi (1975, published in Japan)
—Edited and printed by her Japanese friend Kise Katsuhiko, presenting the cross-linguistic and cross-cultural character of her work.
The Stove (1981, Kaohsiung: Chunhui Publishing House)
—Using the “stove” as a symbol of family, land, and the source of life, revealing the integration of nativist sensibility and a female perspective.
Quiet Contemplation at the Mountain Summit (1986, Taipei: Li Poetry Journal Press)
—Drawn from her late-life experiences living in Guanziling, combining mountain landscapes, religion, and contemplative philosophy.
Magnolia: A Collection of Poetry and Prose (1989, Kaohsiung: Chunhui Publishing House)
—Containing both poetry and prose, interweaving memories of women’s lives with natural imagery, rich in emotional depth.
The Complete Works of Chen Hsiu-hsi (1997, published by the Hsinchu Municipal Cultural Center, ten volumes)
—Edited by Li Kui-hsien, comprehensively collecting her poems, translated poems, poetic essays, song collections, and related documentary materials; it is an important corpus for the study of Chen Hsiu-hsi.
II. A Female Poet of the Cross-Linguistic Generation: Chen Hsiu-hsi
(1) Core Perspectives of Postcolonial Theory (Points of Intersection with Feminism)
Postcolonial Theory emphasizes the enduring legacy of colonial/imperial control and cultural hegemony, as well as how colonized cultures/subjects reconstruct identity, enact resistance, and develop cultural hybridity or opposition within conditions of oppression. Postcolonial feminism further points out that women often exist within the fissures of “double colonization”: on the one hand they are oppressed by colonial culture (their language, cultural identity, and sovereignty over historical narratives are deprived), and on the other hand they are marginalized within patriarchal culture.
This condition causes the reconstruction of identity among women/female writers in a postcolonial context to frequently possess two driving forces: the questioning and rewriting of colonial cultural/language systems, and the reflection upon gender norms and patriarchal structures.
Wikipedia
Therefore, when analyzing poets within the context of Taiwanese literature, a postcolonial perspective generally focuses on the following dimensions:
- Language and alternative writing: the imposition and suppression of colonial linguistic systems, and how the colonized select, negotiate, translate, or rewrite their own language and culture within multilingual/cross-linguistic fields.
- Cultural identity / nativeness and otherness: colonized cultures are often suppressed as “the Other” or as “subculture,” and postcolonial writing seeks to reconstruct the subjectivity of the marginalized.
- Memory, trauma, and temporal narrative: the scars, uncertainties, ruptures, and returns of colonial history are common themes addressed in postcolonial writing.
- Power structures and resistant writing: postcolonial literature is not merely a passive response; it is a practice and resistance enacted at cultural and symbolic levels.
Based on these perspectives, we may examine the postcolonial tensions contained within the identity of “Chen Hsiu-hsi of the cross-linguistic generation.”
(2) Postcolonial Tension within the Identity of the “Cross-linguistic Generation”
Chen Hsiu-hsi was born during the Japanese colonial period. Under Japanese rule she learned Japanese and in her early years wrote poetry, haiku, and tanka in Japanese. After the war, Mandarin (Chinese) was implemented as the official language in Taiwan, and she later turned to composing in Mandarin. This means that she stood precisely within a generation experiencing linguistic transition and the reconstruction of cultural identity—namely the “Cross-linguistic Generation.”
Such linguistic crossing contains several postcolonial phenomena:
- The passive acceptance and active reconstruction of language: in the transition from the Japanese-language generation to the Mandarin-language generation, the cultural and literary linguistic system of Taiwan was intervened in by colonial rule, official policy, and cultural hegemony. Writers were forced to make choices regarding language: whether to conform to colonial/national language systems, or to search for resistance or difference through local languages or variants.
- Oscillation and hybridity of cultural identity: she may have experienced tensions and internalization among Japanese culture, Chinese-language culture, and Taiwan’s indigenous/local culture. This cultural hybridity and tension represent a typical dilemma of postcolonial identity: not a simple “return to the local,” nor a complete absorption into colonial culture, but a condition marked by rupture, reversal, and reconstruction.
- The tension between colonization and self-subjectivity: after composing in Japanese and receiving Japanese cultural education, she later turned to writing in Mandarin. The identity of the poet had to reposition itself between the legacy of colonized language and colonized culture. This process itself constitutes a form of cultural and linguistic decolonization.
In this sense, Chen Hsiu-hsi, as a female poet of the “cross-linguistic generation,” embeds within her writing postcolonial reflections upon language, culture, identity, and temporal memory. Her poetry can be regarded as a bridge mediating across languages, and also as an experimental writing in which colonized culture intersects with female subjectivity.
2. Demonstration from Poetic Passages: Postcolonial Feminine Literary Characteristics in Selected Modern Poems of Chen Hsiu-hsi
Below, the author selects several representative poetic lines/images in order to demonstrate their postcolonial feminist literary characteristics. It must be emphasized that such analysis does not aim to forcibly apply theory to every poetic line, but rather to indicate possible tensions and symbolic spaces.
(1) Language and Identity: Poems and Images Responding to the Call of “Taiwan”
She clearly possesses poems imbued with national and motherland identity (such as “Taiwan”): the poet’s pen does not draw eyebrows nor apply lipstick—then what does her pen do? It is used to write down the sorrow of colonization, as well as the discernment and cry for national identity. In her poems she not only writes about women’s experience, but also participates in the construction of Taiwan’s identity as a colonized territory and marginal culture.
In her object-poems, she employs natural imagery such as “fallen leaves,” “tender leaves,” “trees,” “roots,” and “soil.” These can be interpreted as her use of nature as a vehicle to construct emotional and cultural memories of colonized land or the motherland. This embodies the characteristics of “returning to the land” and “memory of the motherland,” which frequently appear in postcolonial writing.
For example, consider the poetic expression:
In Fallen Leaves,
“Let the violent wind ravage / yet ignoring its own weakness / clinging to a tiny twig / becoming a green curtain shielding the scorching sun / becoming a roof resisting wind and rain.”
The passive sacrifice and guardianship of the fallen leaves may be interpreted as symbolic writing of land or identity that is “suppressed yet still enduring” under colonial oppression or cultural erosion.
In Soil,
“Soil secretly feels comforted / having nurtured many kinds of roots / … suddenly the soil is flattened / at the instant when smoking asphalt is poured over it / she feels pain.”
These lines concretely depict the image of land being crushed by the forces of modernization or colonial-style construction. This is not merely a description of nature but carries the tension of cultural erosion, alienation, and disorder. This is precisely the latent symbol often faced in postcolonial poetry: indigenous culture or nature being submerged by mechanized language and forces of modernization.
These passages reveal that the poet employs natural imagery to write memories and reflections on land, personal history, and temporal trauma, thus possessing the potential for postcolonial identity reconstruction.
(2) Women’s Experience and Gender Writing: Symbolic Tension between Oppression and Rebirth
Within postcolonial feminist theory, women are not only marginalized by cultural/colonial systems but must also confront patriarchal structures. The following poetic lines reveal how Chen’s poetry integrates postcolonial perspectives into gender and women’s experience.
A passage from Rose:
“An unfortunate morning / the petals of the rose half-open / are cut off / … the rose whose root is severed is still alive / forgotten through the whole night / anxiously becoming gradually thirsty / the withering edge / greets a fortunate morning / … blooming like the spirit of the afterglow.”
Here the rose is cut off, rootless, imprisoned within a vase, yet still attempts to bloom in anxiety. These images may be understood as symbols of women being severed, constrained by imposed norms, and uprooted in body or self under patriarchal systems. Her effort to continue growing and blooming in adversity constitutes a form of resistance and active reconstruction.
The imagery in Thorn Lock:
“Flowers are the lock of love / thorns are the iron chains of resentment / … when the heart is pierced into countless hollows / … let the strong wind come / please open my thorn lock / let me once again fabricate a beautiful loneliness.”
Here “lock,” “thorns,” “piercing pain,” and “hollows” are symbols of body, relationship, and constraint. Women within marriage, family, and gender roles may endure such chain-like limitations. The poet’s request to “open the thorn lock” expresses a female subjectivity seeking to unlock imposed restraints. From a postcolonial perspective, such chains may also suggest the boundaries of culture, language, and identity.
In The Beauty of the Instant:
“… a leaf departs from the station / like a graceful dancing posture / … perhaps that leaf / is already a detached understanding of impermanence…”
The image of a briefly drifting leaf not only suggests the impermanence of life but also hints at aesthetic and temporal politics in which women’s lives are expected to be fleeting or marginalized. Being seen only within the “instant” reflects a form of marginal temporality, resembling suppressed temporalities in postcolonial cultures (forgotten memories and silenced generational voices).
(3) Temporal Rupture, Flowing Memory, and Historical Scars
Postcolonial writing frequently involves historical rupture, trauma, and the return or multiplicity of time. In Chen Hsiu-hsi’s poetry, verbs and images such as time, withering, rebirth, abandonment, and return repeatedly appear, all related to tensions in temporal narrative.
In The Abandoned Garden:
“In order to avoid a sudden shower / I accidentally ran into / an abandoned garden… in astonishment I suddenly saw / my aging years… the colored ball of memory… what pursued me / was my lonely back / and my aging years.”
This passage describes the interweaving of time and memory: entering an abandoned vegetal space, she sees her own back, age, and disappearance. Such interpenetration of space and time constitutes a typical strategy of postcolonial and modern poetics: the intersection of past and present, fragmentation of memory, and rupture of time.
In Tender Leaves:
“After the rainy season / the fragrance of pomelo blossoms rides the breeze / tender leaves like newborn children / timidly stretch their waists… and then their backs… seeing a rainbow more beautiful and graceful than in dreams.”
Time here is cyclical: rainy season, floral fragrance, and the gaze toward the rainbow. The tender leaves move from dream to awakening. Within this cycle the poet reveals that time contains both trauma and rebirth. Postcolonial theory values this kind of cyclical temporality and return: if colonized culture and identity are not trapped within a linear time of domination but can continually return, rewrite, and regenerate, it becomes a reconstruction of cultural subjectivity.
(4) Cultural Hybridity, Blurred Boundaries, and Writing of Difference
Postcolonial feminism also emphasizes the blurring of cultural boundaries, the reading of difference, and forms of writing that resist assimilation into grand narratives. Although Chen Hsiu-hsi’s poetry is mainly written in Mandarin, it carries hybrid characteristics including folk language, natural local imagery, and emotional tonalities.
She employs indigenous imagery connected with land, plants, and homeland rather than merely imitating the imagery system of mainstream Chinese poetry. Such choices of imagery themselves constitute a strategy of differentiated writing.
She does not strongly proclaim nationalism but instead responds to land, motherland, and hometown through gentle imagery and emotion. This kind of “soft identity” is a common form of resistance against assimilation in postcolonial writing.
Her writing on trauma, rootlessness, withering, guardianship, and rebirth does not fix linguistic boundaries but allows uncertainty and interpretive openness. This non-absolutist and open writing tendency can be regarded as a poetic practice of difference within the intersection of postcolonial and gender perspectives.
3. Comprehensive Observation and Response: The Significance and Challenges of Postcolonial Feminine Poetics
From the above analysis it can be observed that Chen Hsiu-hsi, as a female poet of the cross-linguistic generation, created within tensions of linguistic transition and cultural identity, which represents a typical predicament and practical space of cultural positioning in a postcolonial context.
In her poetry she writes about land, time, trauma, and rebirth through imagery of nature and plants. Her poetic strategies possess the character of displacement and reconstruction of postcolonial cultural memory.
At the same time, within the writing of women’s experiences (love, body, emotion, and family roles), she integrates resistance and self-agency, allowing her poetry to both endure gender oppression and seek unlocking and reshaping through writing.
Her linguistic style, symbolic strategies, and temporal narrative reveal tensions of “soft resistance” and “writing of difference,” thereby avoiding assimilation into a single pathway.
However, challenges and spaces for further inquiry also exist:
Because her writing involves rewriting, cross-linguistic transition, and cultural hybridity, some of her poetic lines may fall into ambiguous zones of linguistic style or cultural identity, creating interpretive thresholds for contemporary readers. Within postcolonial feminist theory, it is important to remain attentive to how the dual pressures of “colonization” and “patriarchy” concretely intersect within the poetry itself. If these intersections are not explicitly stated in the poems, readers and researchers must trace them through the details of language and imagery. In contemporary literary history, how to place Chen Hsiu-hsi within the genealogy of postcolonial feminist poetics remains a subject that awaits more systematic research.
III. An Analysis of the Feminine Literary Characteristics in Chen Hsiu-hsi’s Modern Poetry from a Feminist Perspective
1. The Narrative Subject of Poetry and the Orientation toward Women’s Experience
1. Maternal identity and psychology:
In poems such as Tender Leaves, Fallen Leaves, Return, and Resurrection, the poet begins from the perspective of a mother, a maternal body, and a guardian of life. This maternal-centered narrative subject is precisely a manifestation of female subjectivity. Motherhood is both a symbol of emotional nourishment and potentially a domain of self-sacrifice and endurance.
Within such writing, women are not passive objects being written about, but rather the bearers and interpreters of experience.
2. The body/life as the field of writing:
Although in these poems direct bodily writing (reproduction, sexual organs, and similar elements) is not abundant, bodily sensations, the fragility of life, and sensory experiences (such as wind and rain, moisture, dew, and withering) appear frequently as imagery. In feminist theory, the idea that “the body is an unavoidable field of writing” is often emphasized (for instance, female poets reveal gendered experience through bodily perception).
In Chen Hsiu-hsi’s poetry, tender leaves moistened by rain, fallen leaves bearing wind and rain, and roses that are cut off yet still hope to bloom—all of these may be regarded as writings of life or the body encountering pressure and responding to it.
3. Reflection and struggle within inner emotion:
Women’s poetry often oscillates between emotional introspection and self-awakening. In Chen’s poems, the tension between “expectation and loss,” “guardianship and fragility,” and “glory and pain” may be viewed as the process through which women search for or reshape self-consciousness within traditional gender roles.
2. The Latent Gender Significance within Imagery Selection and Symbolic Strategies
1. Maternal and delicate symbolism of plants, leaves, and flowers
The poet frequently employs imagery such as tender leaves, fallen leaves, flowers, trees, and vines. Such imagery in feminist poetics is often read as feminine symbolism (softness, growth, fertility). She does not treat these botanical images as mere scenery; rather, she endows them with emotion and the appeal of life, transforming them into symbolic spaces of the female inner world.
2. Transformation from injury, withering, and being cut off to renewed blooming:
Many poems involve imagery of withering, being cut off, abandonment, and fading (such as “Rose,” “The Withered Epiphyllum,” and “The Abandoned Garden”). These negative images correspond structurally with women’s experiences of limitation and injury within society and culture. A feminist reading may indicate that the metaphor of the cut flower symbolizes the deprivation of women’s autonomy and wholeness, yet the poet still attempts to achieve rebirth and blossoming from rupture, presenting a posture of resistance.
3. Imagery of protection and shelter: fallen leaves shielding against wind and rain
In Fallen Leaves, the fallen leaves do not exist for themselves but shield the tender leaves from wind and rain. Such “concealed guardianship” may be interpreted as the supportive and protective roles long played by women. Feminist criticism may question whether this role reproduces gender division, or whether it also represents an internal transformation of feminine power.
4. Spatial imagery and the sense of belonging
Poems such as The Abandoned Garden, Blue Bird, and The Beauty of the Instant contain spatial imagery such as “garden,” “abandoned garden,” and “sky/distance.” These spaces often function as arenas of memory, love, loss, and searching. For female subjectivity, the definition of space often involves the tension between “inside/outside,” “domestic/public,” and “closed/open.” Within this framework, the poet may be quietly writing about how women locate their own existence within space.
3. Latent Critique in Gender Power and Reflection
1. Implicit questioning of patriarchal norms and gender roles
Although the poems may not explicitly articulate arguments about gender oppression, certain symbolic fissures may conceal interrogations of traditional gender roles. For instance, in “The Rose Does Not Know,” crossing the bamboo fence, injured arms, and love given yet ignored form a series of images that may be interpreted as a critical space concerning “women’s expectations of love” and a “male culture of emotional indifference.”
2. Resistance and self-reconstruction from the perspective of internal agency
Many poems show that the poet does not completely yield to pain or restriction: the tender leaves eventually glimpse the rainbow, the rose “still blooms” amid adversity, and the fallen leaves persist while also bearing possible destruction. This poetic posture moving from fragility to persistence represents what feminism calls agency: even under pressure, women retain the possibility of reshaping themselves and defending or creating space.
3. Writing the boundary between self and the Other
Feminist criticism often examines whether the relationships of “I–you” or “I–the Other” in poetry reflect asymmetries of gendered power. For example, in Return, the poet’s “I” expresses expectation and emotion toward “you,” which may contain the emotional labor of gender and the reconstruction of relationships. If such emotional writing allows the voice or will of “you” to appear, it has the potential for balance of subjectivity; if it repeatedly falls into the gaze or expectation of “I,” it may reproduce gender inequality.
4. Feminine Texture and Linguistic Tendencies in Poetic Style
1. Gentle tone and implicit tension
In many poetic lines, Chen’s poetry adopts a subtle and gentle tone. Rather than forcefully proclaiming, it presents emotional tension through metaphor, suggestion, and silence. Such tonal strategy is often regarded in feminist poetics as a form of “feminine writing,” in which softness and restraint resist overly masculine direct confrontation. Jin Hua’s discussion of women’s poetry emphasizes that poetry possesses “poetic thinking and the rhythmic vitality of language,” making gender expression possible.
2. Semantic flexibility through polysemy and repeated imagery
Feminist poetics emphasizes the potential for rereading through linguistic repetition, semantic openness, and symbolic networks (avoiding a single hegemonic interpretation). In Chen’s poetry, recurring images such as “leaves,” “flowers,” “wind and rain,” and “shadow/light” possess precisely such possibilities for reinterpretation. Readers and poets may repeatedly interpret them within different contexts.
3. Writing of temporal sense and variation
The sense of time presented in many poems (such as “instant,” “abandonment/rebirth,” “return,” and “withering/blooming”) indicates that time is not a linear progression but a structure of repetition, interweaving, and return. Feminist literature often emphasizes that women’s lives do not always follow a single linear path (marriage–family–old age), but instead contain tensions among multiple temporalities. Such writing of time in Chen’s poetry may be viewed as a rhythmic response to women’s life experience.
IV. Postcolonial Feminine Poetics in Chen Hsiu-hsi
1. The “Cross-linguistic Generation” from the Perspective of Postcolonial Theory
1. Historical background:
Chen Hsiu-hsi was born during the Japanese colonial period and received Japanese-language education in her early years, later shifting to Chinese-language writing. She belongs to an important group of poets in Taiwan’s postwar “Cross-linguistic Generation.” This linguistic transformation is not merely a replacement of expressive tools but represents the rupture and reconstruction of cultural identity under colonial experience.
2. Theoretical framework:
Postcolonial theory (Spivak, Bhabha, Said, etc.) emphasizes the relationships of power, language, and cultural representation between colonizers and the colonized. Chen Hsiu-hsi’s “cross-linguistic” condition precisely embodies the characteristics of hybridity and subaltern voice.
3. Position of women’s writing:
As a female poet, Chen Hsiu-hsi’s writing bears the double marginality of gender and colonial condition. She neither fully belongs to the cultural authority of colonial language nor easily finds position within a male-dominated literary field. Her work therefore demonstrates typical characteristics of postcolonial women’s literature.
2. Postcolonial Imagery within the Poems
1. Dislocation between language and identity
In “Soil,” the poet uses “soil” to symbolize belonging and maternal land, expressing the search for identity after colonial history through natural imagery:
“The scent of soil sleeps in the palm of my hand.”
Here the “palm” symbolizes the individual’s grasp and preservation of the land, implying women’s writing as a guardianship of the cultural maternal body.
2. Female body and colonial metaphor
In “Rose,” the rose symbolizes both love and the female figure being gazed upon and consumed:
“Whose hand has stroked the thorns yet drawn blood?”
Within a postcolonial context, the rose simultaneously symbolizes the female body and the fragility of the colony, possessed and wounded by the Other.
3. Historical sense of decay and memory
In “The Abandoned Garden,” the garden imagery becomes a projection of colonial cultural remnants:
“Vines cover broken walls; the voices of the past wander like ghosts.”
The garden symbolizes abandoned culture and women’s memory, revealing historical scars and the dilemma of identity.
4. Female subjectivity and the desire for liberation
“The Morning Glory” symbolizes feminine vitality and expresses the desire for self-unfolding within the cycle of sunrise and sunset:
“The blue trumpet of dawn calls out my name.”
The morning glory resembles a woman’s voice—gentle yet persistent—challenging the silence imposed by patriarchy and colonial repression.
3. Summary of Postcolonial Feminine Literary Characteristics
- Hybridization of language: the transition from Japanese to Chinese reveals the rupture and hybridity of linguistic memory.
- Dual marginality: as both a woman and a colonial writer, Chen Hsiu-hsi’s texts embody the identity of the “double Other.”
- Cultural symbolism of imagery: images such as soil, rose, garden, blue bird, and epiphyllum are not merely descriptions of nature but metaphors for Taiwan’s female experience within colonial history.
- Lyricism as politics: even love poems or object-poems contain implicit consciousness of identity, cultural resistance, and female awakening.
Conclusion
Chen Hsiu-hsi’s modern poetry is not merely an expression of personal emotion but represents the female voice of the “Cross-linguistic Generation” in postcolonial Taiwan. Through layered imagery she subtly suggests historical scars and cultural roots, intertwining women’s writing with postcolonial conditions. In doing so, she forms a distinctive feminine literary style that combines lyricism with critical consciousness.
V. Guided Reading of Chen Hsiu-hsi’s Poetry
Chen Hsiu-hsi’s poetry possesses the delicate brushstrokes and graceful emotional sensibility characteristic of a female poet. The author analyzes and discusses her works from three principal thematic categories: “object-poetry,” “lyric poetry,” and “poetry of daily life.”
I. Object-Poetry: Emotions or Symbolism Expressed through Nature, Plants, and Concrete Things
(1) Classification of Themes
1. Buds and Withered Leaves (Imagery of the Cycle of Life)
“Tender Leaves”: new sprouts symbolize hope and regeneration.
“Fallen Leaves”: fallen and withered leaves suggest the passage of time and death.
2. Flowers and Plants (Feminine Metaphors and Fragile Beauty)
“Morning Glory”: symbolizes attachment and fleeting beauty.
“The Rose Does Not Know”, “Rose”: layered meanings combining beauty and wounds, projecting the situation of women.
“The Beauty of the Instant”, “The Withered Epiphyllum”: temporality and the sorrow of transience.
3. Trees and Gardens (Homeland, History, and Consciousness of the Land)
“The Joy and Sorrow of Trees”: personification symbolizing historical trauma and resilience.
“The Abandoned Garden”: refers to the lost homeland and the disillusionment of an era.
4. Land and Natural Elements (Local Sentiment and Postcolonial Consciousness)
“Soil”: the earth symbolizes maternity, nurturing, and cultural roots.
5. Birds and Imagery of Flight (Freedom, Quest, and Desire)
“Blue Bird”: a metaphor for longing for freedom and ideals.
(2) Moving Lines within the Poems
1. “Tender Leaves”
“The trembling greenery in the wind is a heart that has not yet learned to be strong.”
Imagery: Tender leaves symbolize the sprouting of life; the greenery is filled with hope yet unbearably fragile.
Emotional resonance: The trembling leaves resemble a newly born soul, reflecting the unease and learning process of youth or women within society.
Poetic characteristic: The metaphor is delicate, using fragile natural scenery to mirror the psychological trajectory of growth.
2. “Fallen Leaves”
“The yellowed sound recalls yesterday’s spring within the soil.”
Imagery: The color and sound of the withered leaf evoke the rhythm of life moving toward decay.
Emotional resonance: Recalling the flourishing of spring implies nostalgia for lost youth and past happiness.
Poetic characteristic: The fusion of hearing and time transforms “fallen leaves” from a mere object into a bearer of the sorrow of life’s cycle.
3. “Morning Glory”
“Clinging to another’s body, yet forgetting its own roots.”
Imagery: The clinging nature of the morning glory is personified as a dependent life.
Emotional resonance: It implies that women in love or society may lose themselves through dependence.
Poetic characteristic: The feminist perspective is evident, using botanical characteristics to express awareness of gendered conditions.
4. “Rose”
“Every soft petal hides a secret of piercing pain.”
Imagery: The rose’s petals and thorns coexist, beauty and pain existing together.
Emotional resonance: Symbolizes love or women’s destiny, where harm lies hidden beneath outward beauty.
Poetic characteristic: Strong contrast rhetoric merges contradictory qualities within a single image.
5. “The Joy and Sorrow of Trees”
“Roots are buried deep in darkness, yet branches stretch toward the light.”
Imagery: The contrasting directions of roots and branches symbolize the coexistence of suffering and hope.
Emotional resonance: Enduring hardship while still seeking light reflects the struggles of both individuals and nations.
Poetic characteristic: Possesses postcolonial metaphorical meaning, confronting historical trauma while seeking the future.
6. “Soil”
“Your embrace receives our tears and turns memory into seeds.”
Imagery: The embrace of soil suggests the maternity of the earth.
Emotional resonance: Expresses gratitude and attachment to the land and history.
Poetic characteristic: Symbolism and personification combine to merge individual emotion with collective memory.
7. “The Abandoned Garden”
“On an afternoon with no visitors, weeds replace the blooming of roses.”
Imagery: The abandoned garden and weeds represent loss and decline.
Emotional resonance: Expresses forgotten years and emotional desolation.
Poetic characteristic: An allegorical landscape emphasizing cultural decay and solitude.
8. “Blue Bird”
“Blue wings sweep across unfinished dreams.”
Imagery: The blue bird symbolizes hope and freedom.
Emotional resonance: Unfinished dreams suggest the pursuit of freedom that cannot be fully realized.
Poetic characteristic: Possesses a surreal tone that combines dreams with flight.
9. “The Withered Epiphyllum”
“For the beauty of a single night, it pours out all its light.”
Imagery: The brief blooming of the epiphyllum symbolizes the momentary brilliance of life or love.
Emotional resonance: Reflects women’s self-sacrifice and the pursuit of fleeting happiness.
Poetic characteristic: Hyperbole and symbolism combine to emphasize the tragic aesthetics of “the instant as eternity.”
(3) An In-depth Discussion of the Poetic Characteristics of Chen Hsiu-hsi’s Object-Poetry
1. Symbolism: Plants as Allegories of Life and Women’s Conditions
Chen Hsiu-hsi’s object-poetry often reflects multiple meanings of life through concrete flowers, grasses, and trees. For instance, “Tender Leaves” symbolizes the fragility and hope of new life, while “Fallen Leaves” implies aging and the irreversible passage of time. Particularly in “Rose” and “Morning Glory,” the dependent nature of flowers and the hidden pain of thorns correspond directly to women’s struggles within love and social structures.
Such symbolism is not merely a simple depiction of nature; rather, it transforms the properties of plants into allegories of human life, giving the poetry philosophical depth.
2. Synesthesia: The Interweaving of Vision, Touch, and Emotion
Her object-poetry frequently employs synesthesia, granting natural objects powerful sensory tension. The phrase “yellowed sound” in “Fallen Leaves” connects color and sound, allowing readers to feel the echo of passing time. In “Soil,” the line “the embrace receives tears” merges the texture of land with maternal emotion, bringing touch and feeling together in poetic form.
This use of synesthesia transcends single sensory experience and creates a multilayered lyrical space in which natural scenery becomes an intersection of spiritual and bodily perception.
3. Postcolonial Feminine Writing: Natural Imagery Bearing the Double Wounds of History and Gender
Chen Hsiu-hsi’s object-poetry is not merely lyrical nature writing; it also contains historical metaphors within a postcolonial context and features of women’s literature.
In “The Joy and Sorrow of Trees,” the imagery “roots buried deep in darkness, yet branches reaching toward light” not only portrays individual suffering under a dark history but also implies Taiwan’s cultural struggle after colonial experience.
“The Abandoned Garden” symbolizes lost cultural memory and a barren historical space, corresponding to the dual trauma of colonial history and the disillusionment of homeland.
Meanwhile, the momentary brilliance of “The Withered Epiphyllum” resonates with the condition in women’s lives of being “observed” and “consumed.”
Chen Hsiu-hsi transforms the brevity, fragmentation, and disappearance found in nature into metaphors of culture and gender, constructing a distinctive form of postcolonial feminist writing.
II. Lyric (Love) Poetry: Love, Emotional Entanglement, and Deep Affection
(1) Classification of Themes
1. The Belonging of Love and Nostalgia (Return, The Tree of the Village)
Love often corresponds intertextually with the theme of “return,” carrying metaphors of embrace, waiting, and homecoming.
Imagery of the village makes love not merely a private whisper but also connected to land and homeland.
2. The Playfulness and Lightness of Love (Wonderful Playful Words)
Dialogue, playful speech, and murmurs present the light, ambiguous side of love.
3. The Solemnity and Weight of Love (Love, Thorn Lock)
Direct writing about the essence of love often carries contradiction: both beautiful and painful, both desired and imprisoning.
“Thorn Lock” metaphorically represents the bondage and wounds of love.
4. The Distant Gaze and Transcendence of Love (Moon-Gazing Lyric)
The moon is a common symbol of romance in poetry, representing both distant emotional connection and the feelings of loneliness and longing.
(2) Moving Lines within the Poems
1. “Return”
“In your gaze, I see the lamp at the end of a long road.”
Interpretation: A symbol of love and belonging, suggesting spiritual reliance after long wandering.
Imagery interpretation: The gaze is described as a “lamp,” symbolizing light and stability.
Emotional resonance: The feeling of drifting after long travel finds its endpoint through the gaze of love, showing love as the home of the soul.
Poetic characteristic: The juxtaposition of “end point” and “lamp” emphasizes the exhaustion of the journey and the warmth of return, forming a powerful contrast.
2. “The Tree of the Village”
“When I lean beneath your shadow, the wind of my hometown quietly pauses.”
Interpretation: The beloved is compared to a “tree,” bearing attachment and homesickness.
Imagery interpretation: The tree symbolizes stability and shelter, while the shadow suggests protection and intimacy.
Emotional resonance: The beloved becomes a symbol of the homeland, allowing love to transcend private feeling and intertwine with memory of home.
Poetic characteristic: By combining the imagery of the beloved with “native land,” Chen Hsiu-hsi’s poetry presents a unique threefold structure of love—homeland—belonging.
3. “Wonderful Playful Words”
“Every gentle word you speak leaves an echo upon my heart.”
Interpretation: The words of love are transformed into lasting resonance within the soul.
Imagery interpretation: Soft speech resembles the sound of wind, while echoes imply continual reverberation.
Emotional resonance: Sweet words in love are not merely momentary excitement but become enduring echoes within the depths of the heart.
Poetic characteristic: The dynamic nature of “sound” becomes the continuity of “echo,” revealing the enduring power of the language of love.
4. “Love”
“You are a tender flame and also the sword upon my heart.”
Interpretation: Directly reveals the contradiction of love: passion and pain coexist.
Imagery interpretation: Flame symbolizes passion and warmth, while sword represents harm and threat.
Emotional resonance: Love is depicted as a double-edged sword—both comfort and wound.
Poetic characteristic: The binary opposition of “flame/sword” forms an aesthetic of contradiction, revealing the complex nature of love.
5. “Thorn Lock”
“I am willing to be surrounded by thorns, because the key that locks my heart is in your hand.”
Interpretation: Pain and willingness intertwine, presenting the predicament and devotion of love.
Imagery interpretation: Thorns symbolize pain, while the key implies the sole liberation.
Emotional resonance: Even amid the pain and bondage of love, the speaker remains willing, demonstrating devotion and self-sacrifice.
Poetic characteristic: The metaphor of the “thorn lock” represents emotional relationships, combining bodily pain with spiritual attachment and revealing the profound experience of love from a female poet’s perspective.
6. “Moon-Gazing Lyric”
“Tonight I gaze at the moon—are you also illuminated by the same silver light?”
→ Through the moon, longing between two places is connected, expressing a love that transcends time and space.
Interpretation of imagery:
The moon is a universal romantic symbol, and its silver light possesses the quality of illumination and shared radiance.
Emotional resonance:
By using the moon as a connection, the barrier of time and space is crossed, transforming longing into a simultaneously shared moment.
Poetic characteristic:
It carries echoes of classical lyricism (such as Zhang Jiuling and Li Bai’s idea of “sharing the same bright moon”), while simultaneously infusing the loneliness and expectation of a modern woman.
III. Overall Characteristics
1. Symbolism — A Genealogy of Imagery between Classical Tradition and Modern Reinterpretation
Chen Hsiu-hsi tends to concretize emotions into objects that possess long-lasting cultural meanings—such as “trees,” “the moon,” “flames,” “roses,” and “gardens.”
These images, on the one hand, inherit classical paradigms of Chinese poetry (the tree as shelter, the moon as longing, the lamplight as homecoming). On the other hand, within her modern context they are re-signified: they preserve the original symbolic energy while being endowed with new meanings related to gender and history.
For example, in her poetry the tree simultaneously functions as a metaphor for the beloved and as a substitute for the homeland, producing a field where “private emotion” and “public memory” intersect. The moon, likewise, is not merely the classical symbol of longing but becomes a temporal medium shared between two places, two generations, and even across linguistic generations.
Methodologically, two approaches may be adopted:
- Symbolic genealogy (tracing intertextual lineage): comparing semantic changes of the same imagery across classical and modern texts.
- Semiotic field reading: analyzing how the same image within a single poem or across a collection is appropriated and transformed by different discursive domains (family, nation, gender).
2. Contradiction — The Aesthetic Tension of Comfort and Trauma
Chen’s representation of love is not a one-directional praise but a compound entity containing contradictions. Love is gentle (lamplight, embrace, echo) yet also painful (thorns, swords, severing). This juxtaposition is not merely rhetorical coincidence but an ethical and aesthetic choice in modern poetry: to present the authenticity of experience through contradiction.
From a poetic perspective, the poet frequently employs short lines, adhesive imagery, and parallel repetitions that place calmness and abruptness side by side. In this way, readers experience the complexity of love through the tension between sensibility and intellect.
From a gender perspective, this contradiction reflects the psychological tension of female subjectivity between nurturing and injury, protection and confinement. It presents an ethical dilemma in which “willing wounds” and “constrained agency” coexist.
Analytical methods may include syntactic-rhetorical analysis (how syntax and figures create ambivalence) combined with feminist ethical reading to explore how poetry elevates private emotion into metaphors of social or structural conditions.
3. Cultural Dimension — The Historical and Spatial Embedding of Love Writing
In Chen Hsiu-hsi’s poetry, love is not merely an emotional expression within a purely private sphere. Instead, it is embedded within historical layers such as memories of the homeland, the decline of land, and the rupture of language, forming a type of cultural lyricism.
In other words, the narrative of love simultaneously carries:
- the rupture of time (memories of the cross-linguistic generation),
- collective trauma (abandonment, forgotten gardens),
- identity politics (the boundary of women between public and private spheres).
Thus her lyricism is not merely emotional expression but embodies the concept that “lyricism is politics.” Love becomes a lens through which postcolonial and gender conditions may be understood.
In research, a single love poem may be treated as a micro-case, and then read intertextually with her localist poetry and object-poetry to reveal how love bears cultural meanings in different contexts.
Suggested method: adopt a micro–macro verification approach—first conduct close reading of lines and passages, then return the conclusions to the entire poetry collection or cross-historical materials to examine their historical relevance.
Concluding Note
These three characteristics are mutually interwoven:
- Symbolism provides the linguistic vehicle.
- Contradiction provides emotional tension.
- Cultural dimension provides contextual depth.
III. Poetry of Daily Life: Reflections on Family, Everyday Life, Human Relations, and Life Experience
(1) Thematic Classification of Life Poetry
Chen Hsiu-hsi’s life poetry, compared with her object-poetry and love poetry, is closer to everyday details and family scenes. Through ordinary objects, she transforms daily life into reflections on existence.
- Family sphere: “The Stove” — using stove fire and cooking to symbolize the warmth of family and maternity.
- Reflection on life: “Resurrection” — rebirth after death or loss becomes a philosophical reflection on life.
- Allegorical everyday life: “Blue Bird” — containing allegorical meaning and the pursuit of happiness realized within life’s hope.
- Everyday objects: “Cabbage” — an ordinary vegetable transformed into gratitude for labor and life.
(2) Moving Lines within the Poems
1. “Resurrection”
“Every time the night passes, life finds light within the cracks.”
→ This line demonstrates the resilience of life: even in desperate circumstances, opportunities for rebirth still exist, expressing humanity’s persistence in hope.
The poem transforms “night” into a symbol of life’s hardship, loss, or death, while “light within the cracks” represents hope that still exists amid brokenness.
It is not merely a natural metaphor but a philosophical interpretation of life’s resilience: true rebirth often does not occur in complete brightness but begins from the humblest and smallest fissures.
This “hope within dim light” carries the sensitivity of feminine poetics, presenting a vision of life that is both patient and delicate.
2. “The Stove”
→ Elevates daily cooking into a metaphor of love; the family scene becomes the deepest shelter of life.
“Firelight dances in my mother’s palms, feeding our hunger and our dreams.”
Here the stove fire becomes a concrete manifestation of maternal love. Firelight represents warmth, shelter, and the center of life.
When the poet writes that the firelight “dances in the mother’s palms,” the mother is personified as the guardian of the home—both the force that nourishes bodily hunger and the source that nurtures dreams.
It simultaneously possesses materiality (feeding) and spirituality (dreams), elevating an everyday scene into a universal allegory of life with profound familial ethical significance.
3. “Blue Bird”
→ Brings the allegorical bird back into real life, making the pursuit of happiness both romantic and close to everyday existence.
“Blue wings sweep between tiled houses, like a hint of happiness.”
The blue bird originates from Western allegory and is often regarded as a symbol of happiness and hope.
Here, however, it no longer remains in myth but flies above tiled houses—an extremely ordinary living scene.
Happiness is no longer an unattainable dream but something close to life and fleetingly perceptible.
The passing sweep of blue wings emphasizes the fleeting nature of happiness, while the phrase “a hint of happiness” preserves expectation and longing.
This represents a writing strategy that brings allegory back into everyday life, reflecting the distinctive feature of a postcolonial female poet who localizes “foreign symbols.”
4. “Cabbage 2”
→ Within an ordinary vegetable lies the connection between labor, land, and family, highlighting the simple beauty of life poetry.
“Layer upon layer of leaves wrap the sweat of the earth and my mother’s smile.”
The cabbage, originally the most ordinary and unremarkable vegetable, is endowed with multiple symbolic meanings by the poet.
The layered leaves resemble the accumulation of life experience and also the meticulous protection of maternal love.
The “sweat of the earth” symbolizes agricultural labor and the grace of the land, while “the mother’s smile” embodies the emotional presence of home.
From a single vegetable the poem expands to encompass land and kinship, revealing the simple yet profound beauty of life poetry.
This is not merely lyricism but also an extension of social and cultural concern.
(3) Analysis of Poetic Characteristics
1. Juxtaposition of Everydayness and Symbolism
One major feature of Chen Hsiu-hsi’s life poetry is her ability to transform ordinary daily experiences into symbols of universal meaning.
Firelight, cabbage, tiled houses, and bird feathers are all the most ordinary elements of life. Yet in her poetry these everyday objects are endowed with deeper spiritual significance.
For example, the firelight in “The Stove” is not only a material element for cooking food but also symbolizes the energy of maternal love and the core of family life.
Similarly, the layered leaves in “Cabbage” transcend the nature of food ingredients and symbolize the shelter of land and maternity.
This poetic strategy of “moving from life into philosophy” reflects the female poet’s capacity to elevate ordinary experience into a shared human insight, combining emotion with reflection.
2. Perspective of Family and Maternity
In life poetry, the family space is often magnified into the root of emotion and culture.
Poems such as “The Stove” and “Cabbage” emphasize the role of maternity: the mother’s hands, smile, and labor not only carry personal memory but also imply maternal writing within social and cultural contexts.
Chen Hsiu-hsi’s poetry reveals a process of “mythologizing the family.” Kitchens, dining tables, and farmlands are elevated into spaces that carry female emotion and philosophical meaning.
This perspective not only reflects the feminist critical concept of rewriting women’s experiences, but also challenges earlier male-centered lyric traditions and establishes an aesthetic of everyday life belonging to women.
3. Lyricism of Life’s Resilience
Chen Hsiu-hsi’s life poetry often writes hope within adversity, presenting a resilient philosophy of life.
The “light within the cracks” in “Resurrection” symbolizes not only rebirth but also the spiritual power through which women under the dual pressures of society and family can still find an exit.
The “hint of happiness” in “Blue Bird” emphasizes the fleeting nature of happiness, yet this transience does not lead to nihilism. Instead, it highlights the value and process of pursuing happiness.
Such lyricism does not fall into sentimentality but expresses hope in adversity through endurance and subtlety—much like the emphasis in postcolonial women’s literature on seeking vitality within the cracks of oppressive structures.
Summary
Therefore, the poetic characteristics of Chen Hsiu-hsi’s life poetry may be viewed as the intersection of three levels:
- Textual level: concrete everyday objects are transformed into symbols, establishing tension between sensory perception and philosophical meaning.
- Gender level: through imagery of maternity, family, and shelter, a female lyrical tradition is constructed, granting everyday life a solemn poetic dignity.
- Cultural level: within hardship and ordinariness, the resilience and hope of life are written, presenting the lived posture of women within postcolonial Taiwanese society.
Summary: Characteristics and Historical Significance of Chen Hsiu-hsi’s Modern Poetry
I. Characteristics of Chen Hsiu-hsi’s Modern Poetry
1. Emotion Embedded in Object-Poetry, with Profound Symbolism
Chen Hsiu-hsi frequently uses natural imagery (such as tender leaves, roses, epiphyllum flowers, and the bluebird) to convey emotions. These objects are not merely rhetorical decorations, but metaphors for life circumstances and the condition of women.
She interweaves “the growth and withering of plants” with “the hope and pain of love,” creating a resonance between the two. As a result, her poetry possesses strong symbolic and allegorical qualities.
2. A Feminine Lyric Perspective
Her love poems and poems about daily life reveal the delicate emotional sensibility of women. They not only celebrate the sweetness of love, but also expose its contradictions and suffering (such as in “Thorn Lock”).
At the same time, she elevates the themes of family, motherhood, and everyday life (such as in “The Stove” and “Cabbage”) to the level of poetic expression.
By doing so, she challenges the traditionally male-centered lyrical tradition and establishes a lyrical discourse that belongs to women.
3. The Interweaving of Everyday Life and Philosophical Reflection
Chen Hsiu-hsi excels at beginning with the most ordinary details of daily life (firelight, vegetables, tiled houses) and transforming them into profound reflections on life.
This writing strategy of “seeing the greater through the small” allows her poetry to possess both intimacy and intellectual depth, demonstrating the richness of a poetics rooted in everyday aesthetics.
4. A Modern Sensibility of Contradictory Tension
Her poetry often presents a dialectical opposition between two poles: light and darkness, hope and loss, love and injury.
This sense of contradiction not only constitutes the internal tension of her poetry but also reflects the fragmentation and existential dilemmas characteristic of modern poetry.
II. The Historical Significance of Chen Hsiu-hsi’s Modern Poetry
1. A Representative of the Cross-Linguistic Generation
As a female poet of the “Cross-linguistic Generation,” her literary creation spans the Japanese colonial period, the postwar era, and the modern age.
Her language carries traces of both Japanese education and Chinese literary writing, revealing the struggle and integration of Taiwanese literature between linguistic transition and cultural identity.
2. Postcolonial Feminist Writing
Her poetry is not only personal lyricism but also writing shaped by history and gender.
The imagery of nature and family not only implies the position of women within the family structure but also reflects the cultural trauma experienced during the colonial and postwar periods.
Thus, her work becomes an important model of postcolonial feminist literature.
3. A Bridge in the Development of Taiwanese Modern Poetry
She inherits the symbolism and lyrical tradition of classical poetry, while simultaneously incorporating the free forms and existential reflections of modern poetry.
Her poetry is neither entirely classical nor purely modernist; instead, it finds a path of synthesis between the two, opening new expressive possibilities for Taiwanese modern poetry.
4. Her Position in the History of Women’s Literature
In the history of Taiwanese poetry, Chen Hsiu-hsi’s works mark the transformation of female poets from “objects to be observed” into “subjects capable of self-expression.”
She integrates women’s emotions and experiences into the core of literature, enabling women to occupy a more solid and recognized position within Taiwanese literary history.
■ Conclusion
The distinctive features of Chen Hsiu-hsi’s modern poetry can be summarized as:
- Using nature as symbolism
- Taking women as the central subject
- Transforming everyday life into philosophical reflection
- Creating tension through contradiction
Meanwhile, her historical significance lies in:
- Cross-linguistic writing
- A testimony of postcolonial experience
- Serving as a bridge in modern poetry
- The establishment of female subjectivity
She is not only an important poet of Taiwanese modern poetry, but also a crucial window for understanding how Taiwanese literature moves from colonial trauma toward self-identity.
References
I. Bibliography of Chen Hsiu-hsi’s Poetry Collections
Chen Hsiu-hsi. Fuye (Fallen Leaves). Taipei: Li Poetry Press, 1971.
Chen Hsiu-hsi. The Sorrows and Joys of Trees. Taipei: Li Poetry Press, 1974.
Chen Hsiu-hsi. Collected Poems of Chen Hsiu-hsi. Japan: Edited and printed by Kise Katsuhiko, 1975.
Chen Hsiu-hsi. The Stove. Kaohsiung: Chunhui Publishing House, 1981.
Chen Hsiu-hsi. Meditation at the Mountain Ridge. Taipei: Li Poetry Press, 1986.
Chen Hsiu-hsi. Magnolia: Poems and Prose. Kaohsiung: Chunhui Publishing House, 1989.
Chen Hsiu-hsi. Complete Works of Chen Hsiu-hsi (ten volumes). Published by Hsinchu City Cultural Center, edited by Lee Kuei-hsien, 1997.
II. Chinese References
Lee Kuei-hsien. Writing and Identity of the Cross-Linguistic Generation: On the Poetics of Chen Hsiu-hsi. Taipei: Hongfan Bookstore, 2002.
Lin Yaode. “Female Poets of the Cross-Linguistic Generation and the Postcolonial Context.” Chung-Wai Literary Monthly, Vol. 23, No. 4, 1994, pp. 45–72.
Zhang Songsheng. Studies in Taiwanese Women’s Poetics. Taipei: Linking Publishing, 2010.
Su Shuobin. “Language and Identity Transformation in Women’s Writing during the Japanese Colonial Period.” Taiwan Literary Studies Journal, No. 12, 2005, pp. 101–128.
Chen Fangming. A History of Taiwanese Modern Poetry. Taipei: Unitas Publishing, 2003.
Huang Meixu. Colonial and Postcolonial Taiwanese Women’s Literature. Taichung: Morning Star Publishing, 2015.
III. English References
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Routledge, 1988.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. London: Methuen, 1985.
Chiu, Kuei-fen. “Colonial Modernity and Beyond: Postcolonial Perspectives on the Taiwanese Literary Field.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 8, no. 2 (2000): 637–662.
Wang, David Der-wei. Taiwan Fictions: The Cultural Politics of Writing in Postcolonial Taiwan. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.
