A Trio of Books from Taiwan: Ocean, Ecology, and White Terror

Speakers:

Kaori Lai, author of Portraits in White

Ian Rowen, author of A Taiwanese Ecoliterature Reader; Associate Professor, Institute for Advanced Study, Kyushu University

Brian Skerratt, translator of Ecoliterature chapter and previous Literature from Taiwan (LiFT) story; Classical & Oriental Studies, Hunter College of CUNY

Moderator: 

Andrew J. Nathan, Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, Columbia University

This event celebrates the publication of three newly translated works of Taiwanese literature, co-published by the National Museum of Taiwan Literature and Columbia University Press. Together, Portraits in White, Eyes of the Ocean, and A Taiwanese Ecoliterature Reader guide readers from the shadows of Taiwan’s martial-law past, across the luminous horizons of its oceanic imagination, and into the vibrant landscapes of its ecological narratives. These works provide new perspectives on the island’s natural environment, historical experience, and cultural vision.

These titles are part of the Literature from Taiwan (LiFT) series, an initiative that promotes Taiwanese literature in translation and engaging both academic audiences and general readers around the world.

This event is hosted by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and co-sponsored by the National Museum of Taiwan Literature (NMTL), Taipei Cultural Center in New York (TCC), International Taiwan Studies Center (ITSC), and Columbia University Press.

Registration:

• To attend this event in-person, please register HERE.

ABOUT THE BOOKS

Eyes of the Ocean

Syaman Rapongan—one of the Indigenous Tao people of Orchid Island near Taiwan—calls himself an “ocean writer.” His works blend Tao folklore and accounts of maritime life with keen critique of the social, psychological, and ecological harms of colonialism. Eyes of the Ocean is his literary autobiography, both a powerful story of survival in a settler state and a masterful portrait of the Indigenous artist as a young man.
In colloquial and vivid prose, Syaman Rapongan depicts Tao beliefs in ghosts, practices of exorcism, and the parallel worlds that exist alongside the human realm. He recounts his difficulties speaking Mandarin in school, his experiences of racial discrimination and exploitation in Taipei, and his decision to return to Orchid Island to rediscover his cultural heritage, as well as his travels to visit other Indigenous artists in places such as Greenland. Eyes of the Ocean also tells the story of Syaman Rapongan’s formation as a writer, a practitioner of a genre of his own creation: colonial ocean island literature. Introducing English-language readers to one of the leading Indigenous writers in Taiwan, this book shares a profound and deeply humane vision of Oceanic art and identity.

About the Author
Syaman Rapongan is an acclaimed author who grew up on Pongso no Tao or Orchid Island. After spending more than a decade studying and working in Taiwan, he returned to his home in 1989, joining the local Indigenous social movement and protesting a nuclear waste facility, and turned to literature in the 1990s. He has also made documentary films, founded a workshop on oceanic ethnography, and crossed the Pacific Ocean in a canoe.

Darryl Sterk is associate professor of translation at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. He has translated works by a number of Taiwanese writers, including Wu Ming-Yi’s The Stolen Bicycle (2017) and Kevin Chen’s Ghost Town (2022).

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Portraits in White

Kaori Lai. Translated by Sylvia Li-chun Lin and Howard Goldblatt. Introduction by James Lin.

After the Chinese Civil War, the Kuomintang imposed authoritarian rule on Taiwan in the name of anticommunism. The White Terror, as martial law and state repression were known, would last for decades, casting a pall of uncertainty and fear over Taiwanese society—and its legacies still haunt Taiwan today. Kaori Lai’s Portraits in White explores everyday life under the White Terror, illuminating how the violence of martial law pervades even the most mundane moments.

The book is composed of three novellas, each telling the story of an ordinary person. Mr. Ch’ing-chih, a schoolteacher, keeps his head down and avoids harming others despite pressure to do intelligence work. Ms. Wen-hui, an old woman who had served as a housekeeper for elites of different backgrounds since the Japanese occupation, faces death alone in the digital age. Ms. Casey, discriminated against for not being of mainlander descent, moves to Europe and must navigate the politics of diaspora. Even if only alluded to obliquely, the White Terror always hovers in the background, shaping the characters’ experiences and inner worlds. Elegantly written and keenly observed, Portraits in White provides a panoramic view of the ways authoritarianism seeps into daily life.

About the Author
Kaori Lai is an acclaimed Taiwanese writer, now based in Berlin, who has received numerous honors including the Taiwan Literature Award and the Taipei International Book Exhibition Prize. Her previous works include the novel Afterwards, the short story collection Island, and essays on Taiwanese history and culture.

Sylvia Li-chun Lin is a former professor at the University of Notre Dame and the author of Representing Atrocity in Taiwan: The 2/28 Incident and White Terror in Fiction and Film (Columbia, 2007).

Howard Goldblatt is the translator of more than 60 works in Chinese, including the novels of Nobel laureate Mo Yan, for which he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Lin and Goldblatt have collaboratively translated nearly two dozen books by writers from China and Taiwan, including Notes of a Desolate Man by Chu T’ien-wen (Columbia, 1999).

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A Taiwanese Ecoliterature Reader

Edited by Ian Rowen, Ti-han Chang, and Darryl Sterk.

An Indigenous hunter laments the decline in the flying squirrel population and reflects on how animals perceive the world. In a drought-stricken cyberpunk anytown, kids revolt against the grown-ups only to face off with stray dogs over water. During late-night diving sessions, a researcher encounters a mysterious group of ocean-dwelling people with gills. In an overpopulated future, marrying an AI spouse will raise a human’s credit score. A man follows the trail of an extinct leopard, seeking to unravel a metafictional mystery left behind by his late wife.

This anthology showcases cutting-edge works on ecological themes by essential and emerging Taiwanese authors, revealing the vitality of their engagements with environmental crises. Taiwan is a biodiversity hotspot and geopolitical flashpoint, home to both Indigenous peoples and settlers. The pieces collected in A Taiwanese Ecoliterature Reader give voice to this human and more-than-human diversity, telling tales that are disturbing yet hopeful, serious yet sensuous, speculative yet grounded, down to earth yet spanning the seas. They span Indigenous eco-writing, oceanic hybrid narratives, ecological sci-fi, and speculative Indigenous fiction. Together, these stories navigate the landscapes of Taiwanese ecoliterature, illuminating its past and pointing toward its future.

About the Author
Ian Rowen is an associate professor in the Institute for Advanced Study at Kyushu University. His books include Transitions in Taiwan: Stories of the White Terror (2021).

Ti-han Chang is a senior teaching fellow and the deputy director of the Centre of Taiwan Studies at SOAS, University of London. Her books include Reorienting Taiwan: Ocean, Selfhood, and the Pacific (2025).

Darryl Sterk is an associate professor of translation at Lingnan University. He has translated works by a number of Taiwanese writers, including Syaman Rapongan’s Eyes of the Ocean (Columbia, 2025).