Written by Chee-Hann Wu. This article further explores the diversity of Taiwan literature through nearly ninety books curated for the Brooklyn Book Festival. From translated fiction and graphic narratives to Taiwanese American writing, it examines how literature crosses linguistic and geographic boundaries, revealing Taiwan’s layered histories, diasporic experiences, and evolving identities through multiple perspectives and stories.
Written by Chee-Hann Wu and Yi-Jen Yu. This article reflects on the curation of “Slow-cooked: Stories from Taiwan across Time” for the 2026 Brooklyn Book Festival. Using slow cooking as a metaphor for Taiwan’s layered histories and diverse cultures, the exhibition brings together literature, food, and sensory experiences to invite readers to encounter Taiwan beyond the written word.
Written by Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley. This article explores how the Taiwanese political drama Wave Makers helped catalyse Taiwan’s 2023 #MeToo movement by fostering empathy, challenging victim-blaming, and providing language for collective action. Drawing on XinLing Li’s recent book, it examines television’s capacity to shape public discourse while acknowledging its limitations in producing lasting social change.
Written by Joshua W.J. Brown. This article recovers an overlooked Islamicate layer in Taiwan’s maritime history by tracing connections between Quanzhou, Muslim-descended Fujianese lineages, and migration across the Taiwan Strait. Rejecting claims of a “Muslim Taiwan,” it instead shows how genealogy, ports, ritual memory, and maritime networks complicate China-centred histories and reveal Taiwan as part of a plural, interconnected maritime world.
Written by Coleton Hast. Taiwan’s pursuit of sovereign AI raises questions about whose sovereignty it serves. This article examines how projects such as TAIDE and the Indigenous Languages Research and Development Foundation’s language tools incorporate Indigenous data. It argues that representation alone is insufficient without Indigenous control over data and governance of AI development.
Written by Sheng-mei Ma. Part II of the article perceives Detention as a haunting of Taiwan’s White Terror, where Fang’s guilt, forbidden love, and suppressed memory recur through ghosts, banned texts, and images of facelessness and decapitation. Its hybrid cultural references reveal Taiwanese identity as historically layered, while headlessness symbolises political violence, erasure, and unresolved collective trauma.
