A Talk on The Personals (徵婚啟事)
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
- Venue
- SWLT, Paul Webley Wing, Senate House, SOAS
- Room
- SWLT
About this event
The Personals (徵婚啟事)
「生無悔，死無懼，不需經濟基礎，對離異無挫折感，願先友後婚。非介紹所，無誠勿試。」
“Live without anything to regret, die without anything to fear. No need for a financial basis, no frustration with divorce. Friendship before marriage. No marriage agencies, serious daters only.
In November 1989, Jade Y. Chen published a notice for marriage in three major Taiwanese newspapers. She then recorded her interactions with 42 of the 108 applicants, which culminated in the best-selling Taiwanese novel: The Personals. It provides a unique perspective of documentary and mass appeal to its literary value. It is more like an ethnography, a true representation of Taiwanese society and humanity in 1989.
The Personals presents the different imaginations and confusion of the Taiwanese populace towards marriage and desire. For Jade, this book is the experiment of action art and the invisible theatre of Augusto Boal that subverted the “subject-object relation” within the intimate relations – the male becomes the object of the desire with the gaze of female subjectivity.
The book was published in 1992 and subsequently adapted into film, TV series, and stage play.
Jade Yu-hui Chen 陳玉慧
Jade Y. Chen 陳玉慧 is a well-known Taiwanese theatre director and playwright, the author of the best-selling novel The Personals (徵婚啟事), which has been adapted for both prevalent stage and screen. As an influential writer in Taiwan, her work Mazu’s Bodyguard (海神家族) has won many international prizes and been published in different languages.
She is also a famous Taiwanese international journalist who has served as a European correspondent of United Daily News (聯合報) for over a decade since the 1990s. She was awarded the Distinguished Journalist Awards by Taiwan’s National Press Council.
Related event
In Conversation with Jade Y. Chen: The writer, dramatist and director
- Event: In Conversation with Jade Y. Chen: The writer, dramatist and director
- Date: 26 Oct. 2022
- Time: 7pm - 9pm
- Location: SWLT, Senate House, SOAS
