What would Frances FitzGerald say today? Her Pulitzer Prize/National Book Award/Bancroft Prize for History-winning book Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (1972, ISBN 0-679-72394-3) was published in 1972. The U.S. still maintained a military presence there, and Nixon was still in power. Today’s visitors to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City are […]
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for the 'Literature' Category
WoWasis book review: Jay Taylor’s ‘The Generalissimo’s Son: Chiang Ching-kuo and the Revolutions in China and Taiwan’
In this book, The Generalissimo’s Son: Chiang Ching-kuo and the Revolutions in China and Taiwan (2000, ISBN 0-674-00287-3), Jay Taylor provides a fascinating history of the man who presided over much of the political modernization of Taiwan. Ching-kuo was, at one point, a communist student in the Soviet Union, and maintained ties there throughout his […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Jay Taylor’s ‘The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China’
As we here at WoWasis found when we visited Taiwan, English books on Chiang Kai-shek are damned hard to find. Chiang isn’t a very popular figure in many Taiwanese circles, which is why, as a bookstore clerk explained to us, books on Chiang would be found in the “China,” rather than the “Taiwan” section of […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Judith Heimann’s The Airmen and the Headhunters (Borneo)
Judith M. Heimann’s The Airmen and the Headhunters: A True Story of Lost Soldiers, Heroic Tribesmen, and the Unlikeliest Rescue of World War II (2007, ISBN 978-0-15-101434-7) is more than just an adventure story, encompassing many fascinating anthropological elements of the Dayak culture of Borneo. It starts off slowly, but becomes a real page-turner as […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘A New History of Taiwan’ by Hung Chien-Chau
Noted Taiwan newspaperman Hung Chien-Chau (also known by his English name, Joe Hung) has admirably faced up to the daunting task of writing a history of his country in A New History of Taiwan (2011, ISBN 978-986-86637-3-2), an updated edition of his 368 page book of 2000. Hung is a veteran journalist who serves as […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Taiwan’s Aboriginal Peoples’ photo book
Visitors to Taiwan are often surprised by the richness of her aboriginal culture, but finding books in English describing the richness and variety of these cultures can be daunting. Taiwan’s Aboriginal Peoples (2002, ISBN 957-01-2744-9), with photographs and text by Wang Wei-chang, and English translation by Phillip Newell, is a lavishly photographed, bi-lingual, large-format book […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Woman Islands,’ Taiwanese fiction by Chung Wenyin
Chung Wenyin is one of Taiwan’s most prolific writers of fiction. Originally published in Chinese in 1998, Women Islands (2011, ISBN 978- 986-82340-1-7) now appears translated into English. This novel is the tale of a young Chinese woman torn between familial responsibilities, her own personality, and the fact that she’s unprepared for the job market […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Formosa in Fiction,’ by Rolf-Peter Wille
Rolf-Peter Wille is a German writer that has lived in Taiwan since 1978, which makes 33 years as of this writing. He is also a pianist who has performed all over the world both as soloist as well as in a piano duo with his wife, Lina Yeh, who also serves as one of the […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Angelwings,’ queer fiction from Taiwan
Oh how we desperately wanted to like Angelwings: Contemporary Queer Fiction from Taiwan (2003, ISBN 0-8248-2661-2). It had all the markings of a winner, ten short fiction stories told from a gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender perspective (referred to in Taiwan as the tonqzhi and ku’er wenxue movements). Here at WoWasis, our problem was that the […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Wang Wen-hsing’s ‘Family Catastrophe’ from Taiwan
When originally written in 1972, Wang Wen-hsing’s ‘Family Catastrophe’ created a ton of controversy. His story of a dysfunctional family flew in the face of the Confucian concept of respect for parents. The story revolves around a young man named Fan Yeh, and is unfolded in a non-traditional time-lapse interpretation involving an older step-brother, a […]
Read the rest of this entry »
