Xiaolu Guo at Words Without Borders:
A writer explores the semiotic. All artists work with signs and meanings. For me, writing is a form of semiotic sabotage. It is full of bold advances and strategic retreats, and above all it is shot through with deliberate acts of obstructionism.
But why sabotage? Why such a violent word, which resonates with political struggle and warfare?
For a storyteller who switches from one major language to another, semiotic sabotage is a means of disruption and reinvention. Often the method such an author adopts, be she a realist or a postmodernist, involves some degree of linguistic and ideological demolishing and reinventing. I am part of this phenomenon. Having left China for Britain, my writing has been a hybrid of Chinese and English linguistic forms. That’s how I imagine the possibilities of narrative.
More here.
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