![]() ![]() She sat on my bike, waiting for her fiancé to pick her up. ![]() I said let’s cross that bridge when we get there. I said doesn’t matter, other women don’t want me. She said maybe you don’t know that I have nothing to offer you. She’d ask me why I was sitting next to her, and I’d say because you’re smart. Naturally concerned, I’d stare at her out of the corner of my eye. By the time her shift began, she’d be overworked already. Every Saturday at six p.m., we’d work together. By night, she and her fiancé and a few friends ran a bar. By day, she worked at the offices of the Youth Corps. I secretly looked forward to seeing her during my weekly shift. Because of her despair, I was overwhelmed, and because of her despair, I left her. ![]() Despair was in her past and in her present. Xiao Fan was the most desperate woman I’d ever seen. It is a coming-of-age story of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while at Taiwan’s most prestigious university. Notes of a Crocodile is set in the post-martial-law era of late-1980s Taipei. Qiu Miaojin (1969–1995) is one of Taiwan’s most innovative literary modernists and the country’s most renowned lesbian writers. The following is from Qiu Miaojin's novel, Notes of a Crocodile. ![]()
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