The Taiwan edition of Island X is out, published by Linking Books 聯經出版 and available for purchases here. It’s a gift and honor to be able to share this work with Taiwanese readers. Thank you to Feng-en Tu for the invitation, Shuchen Huang for her editorial stewardship, Shin-hong Chen for the careful translation, and Wen Liu and Ming-sho Ho for their astute prefaces. Sharing below part of my own preface, written for this edition.
//…with the publication of the book’s Taiwan edition, I am reflecting on the many ways the book began and ends in Taiwan. Rather than a linear relationship, however, it is a circular and dynamic one. On a personal level, some of the greatest gifts that have come out of researching and writing this book are the ways it has reconnected me to Taiwan and to this history. Like many Taiwanese Americans of my generation, born and raised during martial law and before the widespread use of the internet and social media, direct connections to Taiwan were not possible, even as Taiwan continued to be a constant presence in our parents’ hearts, minds, meals, and community gatherings. As a young child, looking through my parents’ black-and-white photo albums of their childhood and young adulthoods, Taiwan seemed like such a different world that I even imagined for a period of time that it somehow existed in black and white, while we lived in the U.S. in color.
But of course, life in Taiwan is very colorful, and it continued on, vibrantly, without us. Since the end of martial law, a generation of young people was born and has come of age, both in Taiwan and the U.S. While doing and sharing the research in this book, I have met and talked with many of them, in colleges, universities, and community spaces. Some of them are my cousins; others are students, brilliant junior colleagues, activists, and community organizers. Regardless of the particulars of their family backgrounds, they look upon Taiwan’s history, present, and future with clear, curious eyes and passionate hearts. They readily cross intellectual and political divides that have become unbridgeable among many of their elders. They are hungry to know their own histories and the history of Taiwan in the world, in all its complexities and contradictions.
With this book, I invite readers to learn about an extraordinary generation of young people who left Taiwan in search of better lives and opportunities during a time of intense political repression. They brought out with them an open-minded curiosity to learn about Taiwan’s situation in the world. On and around U.S. university campuses, they encountered waves of global and national politics including Third World decolonization, antiwar activism, and the civil rights, free speech, and Black Power movements. Many connected these to their desires for their homeland. For a time, while they did not always agree on what paths to take, many of them, too, freely crossed ideological and political divides in their shared commitment to creating a better future for Taiwan.
After the event at New Bloom, a family friend around my age came up to me. She was the daughter of a well-known politician who had served as a lawyer for the dangwai, who happened to have grown up with my father in southern Taiwan. She told me that my book connected for her what was happening in the U.S. while her own family had been living in the center of the storm in Taiwan. Suddenly, I had the image of a giant jigsaw puzzle, of which each of us has only a handful of the pieces. Only by telling the history from different places and with different constellations of people and perspectives, can we fill in more of this puzzle. For too long, only some stories were told, while others were actively silenced and excluded. But we must insist on filling them in to see the bigger picture. A more just future depends on it. //
Wendy Cheng 