Understanding Intraethnic Diversity

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.

It is More than a Bunch of Numbers: Trauma, Voicing and Identity in Jennifer Chow’s The 228 Legacy

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.

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

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.

The Conditions That Promote or Discourage Physical Punishment as Described by Taiwanese and Taiwanese American Mothers

Physical punishment and the conditions that promote and discourage its use were explored in a sample of Taiwan-born mothers living in Taiwan ( n = 19) and the United States ( n = 15), and U.S.-born Taiwanese American mothers ( n = 15). Grounded theory was used to extract themes from focus group transcriptions. Mothers from all groups indicated that they preferred a variety of nonphysical methods to correct their children’s misbehaviors. U.S.-born mothers were less likely to report use of violent/forceful physical punishment than the other two groups. Some conditions were associated with mothers’ use of physical punishment, such as holding traditional gender beliefs, believing in filial piety and familism, having experienced physical punishment, receiving support from others for physical punishment, experiencing physical punishment as being effective for one’s child, and having a male child. However, other conditions were associated with the rejection of physical punishment, including believing in saving face or the stereotype that physical punishment is illegal in the United States, having personally experienced physical punishment as negative, having experienced nonphysical discipline/punishment, experiencing physical punishment of one’s child as ineffective, and experiencing regret from physical punishment use. Conditions related to physical punishment use and rejection ranged from distal to proximal, and these independently and interactively influenced choices to use physical punishment or not. Findings emphasize the complexity of caregivers’ decisions to use or reject physical punishment, underscoring both maternal experiences and cultural contributions, and highlighting areas that researchers and interventionists may further explore to reduce the use of physical punishment.

Troubling genre, ethnicity and geopolitics in Taiwanese American independent rock music

This paper examines the performances of Taiwanese American Jack Hsu and his New Jersey-based progressive erhu-rock band The Hsu-nami, in transnational contexts fraught by ethnonationalism and race. Through an ethnographic approach, this paper highlights the band's depoliticising practice to deflect the geopolitics across the Taiwan Strait. It also discusses how Hsu adapts the musical and gender ideologies in rock music culture to diffuse racial ideologies surrounding his ethnicity and instrument. Finally, an analysis of the band's deployment of cultural diplomacy discusses pragmatic multiculturalism, a mode that reflects the tension between rock music's ostensibly counter-cultural front and its commercial foundation.