National Museum of Taiwan Literature donates to Leiden Chinese Queer Collection
On the occasion of the Workshop organized last July to officially launch the Leiden Chinese Queer Collection (LCQC), the National Museum of Taiwan Literature (NMTL) donated 30 titles of Taiwanese LGBTQ+ literature to support this initiative. These works where published between 1971 and 2022 by authors such as Chang Ya-han, Chen Xue, Chi Ta-wei, Kuo Chiang-sheng, and Pai Hsien-yung.
This donation reinforces the relationship between the NMTL and Leiden University Libraries, which entered into a Memorandum of Understanding in 2023, following a first donation of over 500 titles.
LGBTQ+ literature in Taiwan
Taiwanese representations of homosexuality have shifted dramatically over time. Before the 1960s, newspapers and literature largely condemned homosexuality, forcing writers to portray same-sex desire indirectly. This began to change in the 1970s with Pai Hsien-Yung’s Crystal Boys, which openly depicted queer life and family conflict. After martial law ended in 1987, queer literature expanded rapidly, fostering broader social dialogue, and introducing new vocabulary—such as “lazi” and “crocodile,” terms in Chiu Miao-Chin’s Notes of a Crocodile which became self-referential bywords among lesbian communities. Today, gender and sexual diversity is widely accepted in Taiwanese literature, with queer fiction, BL (boy’s love), and Yuri (girl’s love) emerging as popular mainstream genres.
One of the titles donated is Chen Xue’s Love Motel (愛情酒店, 2020). The NMTL describes this as “a bold exploration of modern desire. The protagonist—a woman adrift without clear purpose—becomes entangled in a triangle with a gangster and a stylish butch lesbian. Through this network of queer and straight relationships, the novel pushes past conventional boundaries of sexuality and emotion. In doing so, author Chen Xue redefines queer literature as urban erotic writing, offering an unflinching look at how contemporary people confront their true desires.”
The Leiden Chinese Queer Collection
The LCQC aims to collect, preserve, and make accessible primary source material and scholarship on the Chinese queer experience, and to facilitate collaboration between academics, activists, and archivists. Thus, it hopes to help advance gender and sexual equality and diversity through research, education, and outreach, with a key role for community involvement.
Donations of source material and external financial support by individuals and institutions such as the NMTL are crucial for accelerating the process and for enabling the LCQC to diversify and expand in areas such as unofficial publications, archival material, imprints, ephemera, etc. Click here to donate and support us!