Taiwan Shift in Anglophone Fiction and Memoir

Abstract

Increasingly, self-representation as “Taiwanese American writers” proliferates in authors’ notes, book blurbs, and interviews. A reprise of the white privilege in cosplaying Taiwan throughout Anglophone writings, quite a few Taiwanese American novelists Taiwanize their stories in setting, plot, location markers, and character traits. Yet this Taiwanizing in substance shares in their nostalgia over a felt loss, a loss of substance, as though Taiwan with all its visceral details is but decorative, ornamental, pointing to something beyond reach. Such implicit emptiness lies at the heart of Cindy Pon’s young adult dystopia Want set in Taipei, where yous (the haves) and meis (the have-nots) embody the master–slave hierarchy. Jessica Lee’s Two Trees Make a Forest also counteracts a family memoir of absences with scientific detachment. Jean Chen Ho’s Fiona and Jane crystallizes Taiwan shift, a reputed genesis in the island morphing restlessly from one state of being into another.