Rising Tide Series — Moss

Author: Lin Bai
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-01-01
Features: Sha Street is a place full of unique colors, scents, sounds, and sensations. It has gray houses, docks, boats, woodpiles, and things like bougainvillea and moss. Sha Street is a girl's memory, the memory of the homeland for the female writer Lin Bai. This beautiful novel is filled with a feminist perspective, telling the intricate and vivid stories of men and women, leaving much to ponder. The novel "Moss" was written between 1990 and 1992. It was a time when the author's life was turbulent and her spirit exhausted. She almost gave up on writing, as turbulence and exhaustion had damaged her ability to write, and she felt she was losing her touch. She refused to give up, writing the book bit by bit, hoping that one day she would return to that state of writing with effortless grace. "Moss" was written in this way. Its structure is not very rigorous, and its language is not as distinctive as her usual style, but it holds immense significance to her. Through writing "Moss," she rediscovered her sense of writing. The past seeps into every object, they float and swirl, and in the silence, she repeatedly smells the scent of bygone years. Her town, her Sha Street, her great river, the houses with gray verandas, the bougainvillea at the door, the docks, the boats, the woodpiles, the people—illuminated by this rainy night, they all come before her. She suddenly realizes that her hometown has not vanished; it is hidden within her, an integral part of her.