The Public Dimension of Homosexual(s) Dwelling in the Sinosphere: Parks in Pai Hsien-yung’s Crystal Boys and Mu Cao’s Poems

The experience of the public dimension of dwelling changes considerably according to individuals’ different positions in the social space where it takes place. This essay is interested in investigating how literature, as a form of social critique and analysis, can explore this side of the public dimension of dwelling, concentrating on the portrayal of parks as places of homosexual dwelling in the works by Pai Hsien-yung and Mu Cao. After examining the implications of social space for the dynamics of dwelling in the city, with a focus on unequal relations of class and gender, the essay maintains the focus on space by discussing the role of literature as a representational space, before moving to carry out a close reading of texts under survey in order to analyze how parks are approached in terms of dwelling for stigmatized homosexual men and how their public dimension is questioned and reassessed. The essay concludes that the experience of the public dimension of dwelling is inseparable from the modalities of its interaction with the larger social space of which it is part of.