Chinese Journal of Literary Criticism

No.1, 2024

The Self, or the Faces of the Other—Urban Perception and Emotional Narration in the Novels by the Post-1990s Generation

(Abstract)

Xu Gang

The novelists born in the 1990s often start the writing of cities from themselves. The confirmation of individual experience helps them to project a social fable by means of self identification. Beyond own limits, they will engage in an imagination of the other while attempting to touch upon the “periphery” of the cities to reveal the “concealed crowd” so that the meaning of writing becomes grander. It is in this process of radiating oneself to the world or even to the marginal areas that the faces of strangers or the other start to emerge, which as well demonstrates the unique significance and complexity of urban perception and emotional narration.