Racial Glass Ceilings, Gendered Responses: Taiwanese American Professionals’ Experiences of Otherness

This paper explores how Jennifer Chow’s The 228 Legacy (2013) recaptures the buried hi/stories of the 228 Massacre with a trauma narrative about Silk’s deep-kept secrets. It first delineates the evolution of trauma theory and trauma fiction highlighting the significance of articulating trauma and its relevance in healing, hi/storytelling and identity construction. This demarcation shall frame a critical lens to illustrate how Chow innovates distinct insulated narratives on the protagonists to mimic intergenerational ramifications of trauma in the Lu family, to represent their psychological healing and to express the association between silence-breaking, remembering and identity construction. This critical endeavor will also demonstrate that Silk’ story of survival promises the survival of hi/story. Thus, the novel proper not only portrays the traumatic impact, a nightmarish “legacy,” of 228 but also renders Silk’s trauma narrative as the “legacy” to connect with Taiwanese heritage and construct Taiwanese American identities. Given Chow’s innovative form and unique themes about trauma and Taiwanese American diaspora, the article situates her novel in the emerging Taiwanese American literature, Asian American literature, contemporary American diasporic literature and trauma fiction.

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TAOS: The Taiwanese–American Occultation Survey

Earth Moon and Planets ◽

10.1023/b:moon.0000031960.82021.26 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 92 (1-4) ◽

pp. 459-464 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

C. Alcock ◽

R. Dave ◽

J. Giammarco ◽

J. Goldader ◽

M. Lehner ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Taiwanese American

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Repositioning Taiwan: Historical Representation and Transformative Identity in Taiwanese American Literature

Translocal Chinese East Asian Perspectives ◽

10.1163/24522015-01401004 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 14 (1) ◽

pp. 37-65

Author(s):

Hsin-Chin Hsieh

Keyword(s):

American Literature ◽

Generational Differences ◽

First Generation ◽

The United States ◽

Global Scale ◽

Narrative Strategies ◽

Historical Representation ◽

Taiwan History ◽

Cultural Interventions ◽

Taiwanese American

Abstract This article investigates how Taiwanese American writers represent Taiwan history in literary works with a focus on a female perspective as a way of reconstructing identities and repositioning Taiwan on a global scale. With the case studies of the first-generation Taiwanese American writer Joyce Huang’s Yangmei Trilogy (2001–2005) and the multiethnic second-generation writer Shawna Yang Ryan’s Green Island (2016), this article employs Shu-mei Shih’s “relational comparison” as a theoretical approach to analyze generational differences and transformative identities in these novels and argues that these authors’ writings on Taiwan history in the United States embody the transnational connection between the homeland and the host state. More importantly, by adopting similar historical materials and distinct narrative strategies, these novels demonstrate the involved multifaceted political meanings and cultural interventions by situating Taiwan in the related national, transnational and world histories and in doing so connect and compare Taiwan with other parts of the world.

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An Intergenerational Approach to Understanding Taiwanese American Adolescent Girls' and Their Mothers' Perceptions About Sexual Health

Journal of Family Nursing ◽

10.1177/1074840707303840 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 13 (3) ◽

pp. 312-332 ◽

Cited By ~ 22

Author(s):

Tsui-Sui Annie Kao ◽

Barbara Guthrie ◽

Carol Loveland-Cherry

Keyword(s):

Sexual Health ◽

Adolescent Girls ◽

Taiwanese American

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Refuting the Silences of Taiwanese/American History: The Case of Chen Yu-hsi

American Quarterly ◽

10.1353/aq.2021.0031 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 73 (2) ◽

pp. 343-348

Author(s):

Wendy Cheng

Keyword(s):

American History ◽

Taiwanese American

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Understanding Intraethnic Diversity

Journal of Chinese Overseas ◽

10.1163/17932548-12341434 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 17 (1) ◽

pp. 58-83

Author(s):

Bing Wang (王斌) ◽

Min Zhou (周敏)

Keyword(s):

Identity Formation ◽

Public Support ◽

Secondary Data ◽

The United States ◽

American Identity ◽

Martial Law ◽

Ethnic Organizations ◽

Cultural Reinvention ◽

Taiwanese American

Abstract This paper fills a scholarly gap in the understanding of intraethnic diversity by way of a case study of the formation of a Taiwanese American identity. Drawing on a review of the existing scholarly literature and data from systematic field observations, as well as secondary data including ethnic organizations’ mission statements and activity reports, we explore how internal and external processes intersect to drive the construction of a distinct Taiwanese American identity. The study focuses on addressing three interrelated questions: (1) How does Taiwanese immigration to the United States affect diasporic development? (2) What contributes to the formation of a Taiwanese American identity? (3) In what specific ways is the Taiwanese American identity sustained and promoted? We conceive of ethnic formation as an ethnopolitical process. We argue that this ethnopolitical process involves constant negotiation and action in multiple spaces beyond nation-state boundaries. We show that immigration dynamics and homeland politics interact to create diversified rather than homogenized patterns of diasporic development and ethnic identification. The lifting of martial law in 1987 and democratization in Taiwan since then have led to increased public support for Taiwanization and Taiwanese nationalism in Taiwan. Rising nationalism in the homeland has in turn invigorated efforts at constructing an ethnonational – Taiwanese American – identity in the diaspora through proactive disidentification from the Chinese American community and civic transnationalism. This ethnopolitical identity is re-affirmed through cultural reinvention, outreach and networking, and appropriation of Taiwan indigenous cultures and symbols. We conclude by discussing the complexity of diasporic development and identity formation.

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