AN AUTHOR'S ANGST: The Search for Xiao Li's Head: A Magical Tale of Female Re-memberment:

This blog is more like an author note or an afterthought for this magical tale had sprung out of an unconscious need to be whole again. After living in Australia for several decades,  I woke up one day and asked myself - who am I?
I wrote The Search for Xiao Li's Head: A Magical Tale of Female Re-memberment  to remind myself that as a Chinese woman, my journey is much like Xiao Li's. In this short story, Xiao Li, the young protagonist lost her mother and was tortured by a stepmother who chopped her up into little pieces and scattered her to the mercies of the elements. Xiao Li's search for her scattered fragments in order to be whole again, depicts the search for identity, the search for self. In the history of the world, whether Chinese or non Chinese, this tale is told many times over. In fables, poems, ballads and in songs. It is archypal. For me, it was a personal dilemma then at the time of writing this tale. The dilemma is now no longer. Instead it has matured into a quest for answers.
I wrote this short story in Australia  a few decades ago, and it was published in HECATE, a feminist literary journal. As I was writing it, I remember thinking, my search for wholeness was more problematic because I was living in a "white people world' so to speak, as "an overseas Chinese". The question that arose for me was - is it possible to focus on my woman identity without taking into account my ethnicity as a Chinese. Can this be done in a lineal fashion, a question of "prioritisation" as in which comes first - me, the woman, or me the Chinese? Can I separate the two? Of course, I can separate the two conceptually and theoretically as a Sociologist.  And I have often done this in my academic writings. But can I, in my consciousness? A question such as this throws me into a whirlpool of many more questions. All without easy answers. A short story, a fable, a magical tale, is one form that some of these questions can be articulated. Hence, when I wrote The Search for Xiao Li's Head, it was as if that I, too, had lost my head. Will I find it again, living as I still do in "white people country"? or do I call China home? Or Will I go back to China one day to be buried as the Chinese in my parents generation had wished for themselves while living outside the mainland? Will I become whole then, all my scattered bits and pieces can be put together again, and I do not suffer the fate of Humpty Dumpty when "all the kings horses and all the kingsmen could not put Humpty Dumpty together again". I am afraid for me, and for the overseas Chinese like me, whether in "white people country" or in any other, we are the Humpty Dumpties, neither armies, acquired citizenships nor permanent resident visas, can make us whole again. This can only happen when we continue on the search relentlessly as Xiao Li does. She seeks the Goddess Nu Wa's help, the mythological giver of life. Perhaps we, too, need a bit of help from the gods and goddesses.