Reinscribing Taiwanese Americans into Transpacific History

Written by Catherine Chou. For a country that greatly restricts the ability of foreigners to acquire dual nationality, and that also has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, the second-and third-generation diaspora in the United States represent under-tapped human capital. Yet, for both US institutions like Pew, and Taiwanese government and civil society, it seems, fuller recognition of the demographics, diversity, social networks, identity formation, and political and professional commitments of Taiwanese Americans – and the impact of their “civic transnationalism” – remains elusive.

Nostalgia and Exile in the Diasporic Literature of Mainland-born Taiwanese

Written by Fang Tang. The word ‘diaspora’ derives from the Greek – dia, ‘through’, and speirein, ‘to scatter’, and was used to refer to the exile of the Jewish people from their homeland, the historic Israel. William Safran extends this concept in modern society to encompass a feeling of alienation, a nostalgic longing for the homeland and the self-consciousness act of defining one’s ethnicity. Over the past several decades, Chinese diasporic literature has generally been concerned with the motifs of nostalgia, homesickness, cultural identity and a sense of belonging.

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