The Australasian Taiwan Studies Association
Date: Thursday 18 November 2021
Time: 4:30 pm AEDT
Location: Online
This book examines literary representations of Chinese Civil War migrants and their descendants in Taiwan, a group referred to as “mainlanders” (waishengren). Delving into eight literary works published from 1982 to 2011 by second-generation mainlander writers, which all focus on the theme of mainlanders’ relationships to “China”, this monograph explores how the literary narratives of mainlander identity reflect mainlanders’ changing attitude towards the concepts of “China” and “Chineseness”.
Drawing upon theories of Sinophone studies and memory studies, this book argues that during the three decades in which Taiwan marched away from the Kuomintang’s authoritarian rule to a democratic society, mainlander identity was narrated as in transformation from a diasporic Chinese identity to a more fluid and
elusive Sinophone identity. Characterized by the features of cultural hybridity and emotional in-betweenness, mainlander identity in these works contests both the Sinocentric discourse of Chineseness and the bentuhua discourse of Taiwanisation.
Phyllis Yu-ting Huang received a PhD in English Literary Studies from the University of Melbourne and a PhD in Chinese Studies from Monash University. She was awarded the Taiwan Fellowship in 2020. Her first monograph Literary Representations of “Mainlanders” in Taiwan: Becoming Sinophone was published with Routledge in Research on Taiwan Series. Her articles can be found in International Journal of Taiwan Studies, Archiv Orientálni, Journal of Taiwan Literary Studies (台灣文學研究學報), and NTU Studies in Taiwan Literature(台灣研究雧刊).
Hosted by: Lennon Chang (ATSA; Monash University) & Craig A Smith (University of Melbourne)
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