Thinking and Feeling Asian America in Taiwan

Abstract

by the publication of Marlon Horns essay on Chinese American literature in Taiwan in 1982, Asian American studies has gradually established itself in Taiwan's academies since the 1980s.1 Taiwan has since witnessed both the growing consumption of Asian American culture in popular media and the emergence of Chinese American literature as an academic field. Amy Tans The Joy Luck Club and David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly were both well received in Taiwan, not just for their own literary merits, but also for their notable adaptation to films.2 The success of Wayne Wang's film version of The Joy Luck Club (1993) made Tan arguably the bestknown Asian American author in Taiwan, and her later books, including her latest essay collection, The Opposition of Fate (2006), were all translated and published there. In addition to Tan's publications, the works of Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, and a younger generation of Chinese American writers such as Fae Myenne Ng, Gish Jen, and Eric Liu have also grabbed the attention of students and scholars in Taiwan's Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.3 The presence of immigrant novels in Chinese by such writers as Yan Geling and Hong Ying along with the success of Asian/ American films from Ang Lee's Wedding Banquet ( 1 993) to Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow (2004) at the box office have also enhanced the visibility of Asian Americans in Taiwan through the lens of diaspora and transnationalism. Whereas scholars are engaged with organizing conferences on Asian American literary studies and publishing their research in international journals, graduate students in Taiwan also find interest in the critical study of Chinese American literature.4 Shan Te-hsing, a research fellow at Academia Sinica, has pointed out that more than forty master theses on Chinese American literature have been produced in Taiwan in recent years, and the scholarship continues to grow.5 Shan also collaborated with Sau-ling Wong at the University of California, Berkeley, on a translation project to publish canonical Asian American texts in Chinese-language markets, hoping to introduce Asian American literature to a wider audience beyond U.S. borders. Since the 1980s, scholars in Taiwan