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To close out the year I wanted to share some of the new writing on Taiwan that moved or gave me the most to think about, starting with two books that wrestle with the legacy of the mass migration and colonial occupation of Taiwan by people fleeing the Chinese Civil War in 1949 1/
In "The Great Exodus from China" Dominic Meng-hsuan Yang describes the emotional difficulties & revelations he encountered researching the trauma & changing identities of 1949 arrivals, given his background as a "native Taiwanese" whose family suffered terribly under the KMT 2/
Sometimes in memoirs by "double migrants" (China --> Taiwan --> the West) the role that Taiwan was forced to play as a shelter drops out of the narrative. @jessicajlee's willingness to discuss her family's background as privileged outsiders who assimilated over time stands out 3/
1949 arrivals are overrepresented in the diaspora, skewing global impressions of Taiwanese politics, identity & history. @GraceLP's gorgeous essays are written from a vantage point rare in English: exiled "benshengren" families trying to hang on to home 4/ https://www.corporealkhora.com/issue/1/a-seed-doesnt-choose
Taiwanese identity is often described as a new phenomenon that resists analysis. Evan Dawley's "Becoming Taiwanese" traces the roots of Taiwaneseness back to Japanese rule in the early 20th c., as a colonized people built their own civic institutions & agitated for self-rule 5/
As @sehof says, "Taiwanese do not go about their political lives in a state of confusion about who they are. Taiwanese national identity has a strong enough historical foundation that we can avoid problematising it in every single piece about the place" 6/ https://www.9dashline.com/article/taiwans-democratic-journey-and-stabilising-national-identity
This year I read more by & about indigenous Taiwanese, including Ek-hong Ljavakaw Sia, who argues that in a truly postcolonial era "each tribe-based nation [would] be autonomous from both the Han-dominated state & other aboriginal self-governing bodies" 7/ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10357823.2018.1444732?casa_token=YpIRpHh-Up0AAAAA%3AbnlnoZlEXQ8MF-OgKkMQLJ7wIDThuKuUzskVaEszrHIOJfVu2Rnl6qrzbjNqKb7kh72xgNUanVocmw
The work of indigenous scholars reshapes our understanding of what Taiwan is - not a single island but the home of multiple nations, each with their own "culturally specific [conceptions of] spatiality & temporality", as Yayut Yi-Shiuan Chen writes. 8/ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0263775818799751?casa_token=3QtTHePZGY0AAAAA%3AnTgU-M2n-Yl3-ga-ljYjp8aXIsiT3HOoa46A7MyD4Sm6jL95HH-iybUIaPi2J_J8d-X4orbwGXcaLA
The pieces about pandemic-era Taiwan are numerous enough to constitute their own genre. @mhar4's is a knockout:
"The Taiwanese government mapped the success of its response to #COVID19 onto hard geopolitics to strengthen Taiwan’s international space" 9/ https://thesiseleven.com/2020/08/12/covid-19-remapping-east-asian-modernity/
"The Taiwanese government mapped the success of its response to #COVID19 onto hard geopolitics to strengthen Taiwan’s international space" 9/ https://thesiseleven.com/2020/08/12/covid-19-remapping-east-asian-modernity/
Over these months I've wondered what I'm doing in Taiwan when my work & life have long been elsewhere. @GraceHwangLynch's piece about passing down the Taiwanese language reminds me: literally learning to read, write & speak again - & for the first time 10/ https://catapult.co/stories/on-perserving-taiwanese-language-taiwan-through-romanization-grace-hwang-lynch
