Name: Notes of a Crocodile
ISBN: 9781681370774

Qiu Miaojin

WINNER OF THE 2018 LUCIEN STRYK ASIAN TRANSLATION PRIZE The English-language premiere of Qiu Miaojin's coming-of-age novel about queer teenagers in Taiwan, a cult classic in China and winner of the 1995 China Times Literature Award. An NYRB Classics Original Set in the post-martial-law era of late-1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile is a coming-of-age story of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan’s most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, this cult classic is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and major countercultural figure. Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes a rich kid turned criminal and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover, as well as a bored, mischievous overachiever and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend. Illustrating a process of liberation from the strictures of gender through radical self-inquiry, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature.

Notes of a Crocodile

Brianna Hawkins

🎠

The fact is, most people go through life without ever living. They say you have to learn how to construct a self who remains free in spite of the system. And you have to get used to the idea that it’s every man for himself in this world. It requires a strange self-awareness, whereby everything down to the finest detail must be performed before the eyes of the world.

aywen

nica

No need to be silent. Are you sinking into some corner of your melancholy? In my heart, I called out to you.

léna 

dina

They say you have to learn how to construct a self who remains free in spite of the system. And you have to get used to the idea that it's every man for himself in this world. It requires a strange self-awareness, whereby everything down to the finest detail must be performed before the eyes of the world

What is the human race, anyway, but a multitude of outlets for desires? There's no suppressing the truths that arise from our experiences. Desires teach us lessons, and we have to go forth into the new worlds that we construct for ourselves.

I adore this passage because it calls out on our tendency for self-entitlement. I believe that everyone has different set of experiences which would be counterproductive if invalidated. However, I don't think that our pain is unique or exclusive, not really. Just because other people react differently to their suffering, doesn't mean that their grief is less significant than ours. Practicing empathy is a humbling experience; being compassionate to people who bear the same burden as we do will make us realize just how social and interconnected we all are in this vast, vast universe. I wish we all could collectively give up our sense of authenticity, in this specific context, as well as our predetermined thoughts that there's nobility in alienation in order to understand that people are capable of feeling our sadness.

The deeper you love, the deeper your compassion grows and the more you realize that the other suffers just as you do.

Your individual circumstances, which separate you from everyone else, will keep you behind bars for life.

How can the world be this cruel? A human being has only so much in them, and yet you must learn through experience, until you finally reach the maddening conclusion that the world wrote you off a long time ago, or accept the prison sentence that your crime is your existence.

“stop following me around. you’re ruining my chance at happiness.”

- oh, to be young and in love and hopelessly dramatic!

- a book that’s almost entirely about the depressed queer experience, with conversations of friendship and first loves and heartbreaks sort of orbiting that major theme

- one of the most quotable books i’ve ever read. doesn’t surprise me at all that this is as loved as it is by like half of my social circle. i think any young person who picks this up will undoubtedly find a paragraph somewhere in here that changes the trajectory of their lives

- i hate to sound mean when i know so many people that love this book, but i just cannot STAND the dialogue. something about the way characters acted or explained things to one another always felt kind of..... unnatural? makes me curious if that’s because of how qiu miaojin’s writing was translated, or if this kind of speaking is normal in the original language? idk 

- my rating could very easily change with time + a reread in a couple years. where i’m at in my life right now, i found it difficult to resonate with how these characters acted, but if i read it maybe 2 or 3 years ago this would’ve been an instant 5 star read. maybe those feelings and experiences will bounce back, or maybe i’ll feel even more disconnected in the future

- overall a charming story of friendship and the queer world with some GORGEOUS prose. definitely excited to reread it some day

smile??

- “stop following me around. you’re ruining my chance at happiness.” (p.28)

- oh, to be young and in love and hopelessly dramatic!

- a book that’s almost entirely about the depressed queer experience, with conversations of friendship and first loves and heartbreaks sort of orbiting that major theme

- one of the most quotable books i’ve ever read. doesn’t surprise me at all that this is as loved as it is by like half of my social circle. i think any young person who picks this up will undoubtedly find a paragraph somewhere in here that changes the trajectory of their lives

- i hate to sound mean when i know so many people that love this book, but i just cannot STAND the dialogue. something about the way characters acted or explained things to one another always felt kind of..... unnatural? makes me curious if that’s because of how qiu miaojin’s writing was translated, or if this kind of speaking is normal in the original language? idk 

- my rating could very easily change with time + a reread in a couple years. where i’m at in my life right now, i found it difficult to resonate with how these characters acted, but if i read it maybe 2 or 3 years ago this would’ve been an instant 5 star read. maybe those feelings and experiences will bounce back, or maybe i’ll feel even more disconnected in the future

- overall a charming story of friendship and the queer world with some GORGEOUS prose. definitely excited to reread it some day

fucking peak. (this was a reread btw, i first read this in 2023. i am glad i reread it again now.)

Reese Claro

Miao-chin Chiu

WINNER OF THE 2018 LUCIEN STRYK ASIAN TRANSLATION PRIZE

The English-language premiere of Qiu Miaojin’s coming-of-age novel about queer teenagers in Taiwan, a cult classic in China and winner of the 1995 China Times Literature Award.

An NYRB Classics Original.

Set in the post-martial-law era of late-1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile is a coming-of-age story of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan’s most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, this cult classic is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and major countercultural figure.

Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes a rich kid turned criminal and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover, as well as a bored, mischievous overachiever and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend. 

Illustrating a process of liberation from the strictures of gender through radical self-inquiry, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature.

……I don’t want to talk about it……

Jacque

Does not shy away from the throes and passions of intense love and heartbreak. A great contemporary read, though do be warned: the characters are depressed and self-destructive. 

Cherry Chen 

🪢

Saffy

“You can’t hold on to a beautiful thing forever— not in your memory, not even if you keep loving it. If you tried, it would only die in your possession. Beauty must be free to run its course.”

liked how its written as a journal for eyes of only the narrator to see.. allowed for raw and sometimes exaggerated feelings of the desire to love and be loved.. AND although exaggerated it tells without undermining these emotions the characters have.. making it justifiable to their own experiences

ryan

"There are some sorrows so great they are unspeakable, taking hold in the body and leaving a void after the fact. There are some depths that love can never again reach. The mind anoints every fossil with significance in an attempt to preserve it—but in time, they all invariably turn to dust.

Man's greatest sorrow is the loss of what was once his greatest desire."

trin

"There are some sorrows so great they are unspeakable, taking hold in the body and leaving a void after the fact. There are some depths that love can never again reach. The mind anoints every fossil with significance in an attempt to preserve it—but in time, they all invariably turn to dust.

Man's greatest sorrow is the loss of what was once his greatest desire."

“On how to love well: instead of embracing a romantic ideal, you must confront the meaning of every great love that has shattered, shard by shard.”

shen

A sad but uplifting coming-of-age story. It offer a deep look into the psychology of self-sabotaging behaviours but sometimes the plot feels a bit forced just to demonstrate this view.

Viet-Hung Nguyen

this is literature, thank the universe for literature 

I finished this book a week ago, but I'm still trying to process what I've read. It was beautifully written, beautifully translated. My god I felt everything.

Abigail

rory

danakim

reading engagement be like 📉📈
the plot was lacking but the writing saved it

Relating to the narrator terrified and comforted me in equal measure

Ada Lu

one of my favorite books ever. i love you qiu miaojin. i wrote this in my journal, jan. 5, 2024:

“I realized last night that I never processed Notes of a Crocodile. I said once that “I found pieces of my heart” because of her writing. She wrote a lot about the self-loathing one would feel navigating the queer world, when the dominant belief is centered around heteronormativity. How shameful it is to even engage in self-discovery. To hate yourself because you love. And to run away from your heart, because why must it hurt, when you are only so capable of love? There were also other elements: fearing commitment (another similarity between us), unrequited yearning for a woman, the unknowing of the self, and much more that have shaped my late adolescence/early young adulthood growing up queer. 

The way Qiu writes is a different story altogether. Poignant, cuts to the bone. I think I described it once as fruit being cut so carelessly (almost violently), leaving it exposed. It spills over. It slices through. Through and through, past the bones. Until it is both no longer, and yet its very essence remains. How do I explain this?

Qiu is exceptionally skilled, the rawest writer I’ve read. Sensitive, with a rich inner world. Interiority oozing out in writing. It’s a blade of possibility. That’s it, yes – a blade of possibility.”

Alyanna

one of my favorite books ever. i love you qiu miaojin. i wrote this in my journal, jan. 5, 2024:

“I realized last night that I never processed Notes of a Crocodile. I said once that “I found pieces of my heart” because of her writing. She wrote a lot about the self-loathing one would feel navigating the queer world, when the dominant belief is centered around heteronormativity. How shameful it is to even engage in self-discovery. To hate yourself because you love. And to run away from your heart, because why must it hurt, when you are only so capable of love? There were also other elements: fearing commitment (another similarity between us), unrequited yearning for a woman, the unknowing of the self, and much more that have shaped my late adolescence/early young adulthood growing up queer. 

The way Qiu writes is a different story altogether. Poignant, cuts to the bone. I think I described it once as fruit being cut so carelessly (almost violently), leaving it exposed. It spills over. It slices through. Through and through, past the bones. Until it is both no longer, and yet its very essence remains. How do I explain this?

Qiu is exceptionally skilled, the rawest writer I’ve read. Sensitive, with a rich inner world. Interiority oozing out in writing. It’s a blade of possibility. That’s it, yes – a blade of possibility.”

faye

(4.5) i'm struggling to distill my feelings about this book into words, but my copy has been dog-eared and annotated to near-destruction, which i think both qiu and lazi would have wanted. it's asian queer nihilism at (what i believe to be) it's best: satirical, absurd, surreal. i can see how the depressive railing can get tedious/melodramatic, but i'm fond of scattered narratives when they feel like the only way this story can be told. i do wish i could have seen more of the characters, but i suppose the power of this piece is the mystery that shrouds the potential for happiness amongst queer teens in post-martial law taipei. many thoughts but somehow no words to encapsulate them. there's just something about this book...

https://literal.club/activity/cl6qz3jfg13068560ixh1oinsr5u

Bartosz Skalny 

雪 xue

i read this at such a formative age that this book is forever etched into my soul

Maxime van der Wal

If you're in your early twenties, mentally ill and queer, you HAVE to read this.

Sandaru Ravihari

I read this for the Women In Translation month. I really enjoyed the story in the begining but towards the end it got somewhat monotonous and repetitive. However I loved the way the author included small stories of crocodiles in human suits (the LGBTQ community) as a metaphorical manner. Hearing that the author committed suicide and how Lazi, the main character, similarly is being potraied as a lesbian woman suffering from depression and social confusion who often has throughts of ending her life made this book a really depressing one. For some reason I am attarcted to depressing emotional stories. I liked the book and the story, but I wish it was not dragging like it did in the last quarter of the book.

Took longer than normal to finish because I had to pause so many times to reflect… this one hits close to home. 