In every country, local literature contains a subtle difference and a similar concept, but shows different functions with different concepts at different times and spaces. This paper is to verify the function system of the local literature, explaining three examples: the literature after the Cultural Revolution in China, Lu Xun's reference of 1930s and the literary debates in Taiwan. For instance the one Chinese writer Liu Shaotang proposed in 1980s is a performance of nationalism and political ideology rather than a literary concept. In his ”A Preface to Collection of Chinese New Literature Vol 2” (1935), Lu Xun referred to the Danish literary critic George MC Brandes's view, while alleging to fictions written by some young writers who came from local regions as local literature. What Lu Xun actually concerned about was the domestic emigrant status and the feeling of lost that modern young intellectuals felt when they were far from the rural or local community. In Taiwanese literature, the term of local literature, should not only be conceived as a literary genre. It was intricately involved in a tangle with all kinds of elements such as politics, economy, history, society, culture and so forth. In the history of Taiwanese literature there were three literary debates concerning local literature (1930, 1947-49, 1977). Although the context and the cultural vein of the debates are not the same, but there is a common denominator, that is, to recover the subjectivity of writing. This paper, through the examples mentioned above, clarifies that local literature is not a stereotype concept of essentialism, but rather an opportunity with which they could imagine a real image of the people, and an attempt to interpret literature in social, historical and political contexts.