Li Ang was born into an educated family in Lukang, Taiwan. Although her home area had been a key trade center in Ch'ing dynasty times, during the Japanese occupation, its growth had stagnated, with the result that many traditions survived there after having died out elsewhere. This may explain the familiarity with which Li writes about conservative manners and mores in some of her fiction.
However, Li Ang herself is no traditionalist. She published her first fiction piece, "Flower Season," while she was still in high school in 1968, and she was very much caught up in the enthusiasm for existential philosophy and modernist aesthetics sweeping Taiwan at the time. She went on to graduate from the College of Chinese Culture and earn an M.A. in drama at Oregon State University.
She returned to Taiwan to teach at her alma mater and continued her writing. In 1983, her novel "The Butcher's Wife" received the United Newspaper's literary prize and made her famous on both sides of the Taiwan strait. The work is a powerful indictment of male chauvinism and a probing study of the power of sex as a woman's weapon or as an agent of her self-destruction. Li Ang's depictions are brutal, graphic, and unforgettable.
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