Songs of A Small Island 小岛歌

Tianyagenv

Genre: Fiction

Language: Chinese

Author: Tianyagenv 天涯鸽女

Forthcoming in June 2025

 


This is a story about vulnerability. The protagonist, who survived a war and built a stable life in a new land through hard work as a minority immigrant, suddenly receives news of an old acquaintance’s passing. This brings back memories of the islands and lands across the ocean they once knew together. In his youth, he firmly believed that with enough effort, he could secure a life of certainty—a respected job in medicine, a well-matched wife chosen by his family, and even the chance to indulge in a few unconventional romances and fantasies. But the outbreak of war shattered his plans. By a stroke of luck, he survived and emerged victorious, rising to a high military rank, overseeing his fiancée and every other conquered person who hadn’t fought as hard as he had. He believed his judgments followed a simple sense of good and evil, that his actions were in service of creating a new, better life, until that sense of right and wrong crumbled, and fragile lives slipped through his fingers…

Vulnerability—this story uses songs, memories, dislocated language, and inverted recollections to depict this inevitable aspect of being human: vulnerability in distinguishing true, full notions of right and wrong, good and evil; vulnerability in reversing judgments and choices made unintentionally; vulnerability in staying loyal to what one wishes to be loyal to, in holding faith in what one wishes to believe. Through vulnerability, this story also tells of displacement—not only of people across time and space but also of their values and beliefs. To survive, they became someone other than themselves, yet they continued to taste the secret sorrows and inevitable bitterness between each breath, carrying within them what could never cease to be their own.

Dedicated to everyone who strives to survive amid displacement.