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A Cacophony of Voices: Taiwan Literature in the 1980s
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Literary Panorama

A Cacophony of Voices: Taiwan Literature in the 1980s

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Introduction

Taiwan literature has been shaped and molded by various ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and political influences. The loosening in the early 1980s of strictures that had been widely enforced on thought and speech during Taiwan’s Martial Law era opened the floodgates of intellectual and artistic freedom, creating a new and prolifically diverse literary landscape.
 

This new liberal environment brought forth storytellers of all types, who, using pen and paper, gave tangible voices to stories from the heart. Women were free to explore beyond traditional gender stereotypes. Those who plumbed the depths of gender issues and gender orientation no longer worked in isolation. Books were now free to be written and enjoyed in Taiwan’s many languages and dialects rather than, as before, only in Mandarin Chinese. Taiwan’s indigenous Malayo-Polynesian peoples could once again share their engaging and emotively moving stories. Mother Earth’s heartbeat reverberated through writings on nature, while a full palate of deliciously distinctive flavors now enriched gastronomic literature and travel writings embraced stories of adventures both near and far. As Taiwan embraced the emerging age of the Internet, it joined the world in exploring and realizing together the virtually unlimited potential of this unprecedented new information medium.

Countless new voices have created a diversely distinct plethora of rich tones and striking colors that have given contemporary Taiwan literature its unprecedented complexity, unique charms, and idiosyncratic character, making it well worth further exploration.

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Symphonic Literary Presentation of Mother Tongue Language
After World War II, with the lifting of the political martial law in the 1980s and the deepening and upsurge of cultural subjective consciousness, the zeal of returning to native culture or language e ...
Singing with the Pen— Indigenous Literature
If in the narrowest sense “literature” is a “written” art, then the first challenge “Indigenous literature” had to face was the fact that Taiwan’s indigenous ...
Taiwan’s Tropical Literature Scene— Malaysian Chinese Literature in Taiwan
Some Malaysian-Chinese students who study in Taiwan already have an artistic bent, while others become infected by the writing bug only after they arrive. These Malaysian-Chinese writers born overseas ...
Missing My Lost Home— Literature of the Military Dependents’ Villages
The “military dependents’ villages” (MDV) were a unique postwar Taiwan architectural phenomenon whose purpose was to house military family dependents in special compounds. More broad ...
The Gender Movement in Literature— Gay Literature
The term “comrade” referring to gays and lesbians has its origin in the annual Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival begun in 1989 under the direction of Hong Kong theater director Edw ...
From “Ladies” to “Independent Women”— Women’s Literature
In the 1950s a great number of women writers began to arrive on the scene. For the most part, these women had come to Taiwan from the mainland of China and were widely active in literary circles. Wome ...
Carnival on the Tongue Tip— Dietary Literature
Eating is a part of life. Dietary literature focuses on writing about emotional communications in life, tastes in memories, loves of family, personal diet experiences and aesthetic feelings, the origi ...
A Brand-New Wave in the Internet Age— Internet Literature
The booming of the Internet in the past dozen years has changed the traditional mode of writing, publishing, reading, and transmission, which brings a new wave of literary revolution, and Internet Lit ...
Feeling the Heartbeats of the Land and the Fetal Movements of Literature— Nature Writing
“Nature Writing” is one of the most energetic and creative genres in contemporary Taiwanese literature. It demonstrates the results of intellectual constructs and affections through the in ...
Between Homeland and Strange Land— Travel Literature
The purpose and manner of “traveling,” regardless of the space and the time involved, either the past or the present, have different types for different causes, and all the migration it it ...
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