Written by Judy Lee. This article examines how emotions drive community formation among Hongkongers who migrated to Taiwan after 2019. Lee argues that these migrants channel feelings of grief and love for their home city into positive community engagement, cultural production, and education, illustrating how emotion fuels the diaspora.
Written by Donna Wang Su. In this article, the author connects to the book Island X through her own journey as a second-generation Taiwanese American whose family lived through the era explored in the book. This article shares a personal story and invites conversation and participation in building a stronger community.
Written by Leona Chen. This article is republished from Taiwaneseamerican.org. It explores how Island X brings important conversation to different generations of Taiwanese Americans, and the meaning of the book as an opening and invitation for people to rethink about the diaspora community’s history and lived experiences.
Organized by I-Lin Liu. Taiwanese American is not a given status but a process of becoming. For first and second-generation Taiwanese Americans, the experience of living in a foreign land and becoming a member of an ethnic minority group often creates occasions for rethinking or reconceptualizing the meanings of being Taiwanese or Taiwanese American. This article focuses on the meaning(s) of Taiwanese American identity, community building, and the future of the Taiwanese American identity.
Written by Mark Hsiang-Yu Feng. Busy as usual was Highway number eighty, but Mother’s Day made downtown San Jose unexpectedly quiet. However, in front of the California Theatre, lively chat sounded out of the silence, marking this celebratory moment for the twentieth anniversary of the Taiwanese American Center of Northern California during Asian and Pacific Islander heritage month. Families came to fill most of the seats, and three languages—Hoklo Taiwanese, Taiwanese Mandarin, and English—were spoken to express the identity of these participants. To honour the culture of Taiwanese and Taiwanese Americans, the overall narrative of Taiwanese Reminiscence contextualises a mixture of stunts, acrobatic movements, and dance into a condensed representation of the twentieth history of Taiwan.
Written by Chun Chia Tai. For many Indigenous peoples in Taiwan, music is a lively cultural medium that facilitates allying with other Austronesian peoples residing in Oceania. Such a musical way of fostering cultural diplomacy has currently been popular in Taiwan, especially after the release of the album Polynesia in 2014, emphasising the shared cultural genealogy of Austronesian under the collaboration of an Amis singer Chalaw Pasiwali and a Madagascar musician Kelima. In the same year, another project called the Small Island Big Song aimed to establish a network between Pacific Islands and Taiwan through music and film. Musicians in this project released their 2018 album Small Island Big Song and a sequential album named Our Island in 2021. Moreover, all these musical works focus on fusions of traditional folk music(s). Positive public perception reflects Taiwanese people’s rising demand for establishing a cross-Pacific Austronesian community between Taiwan and the Pacific Islands.
