Navigating Identity and Activism: Asian Migrants and Taiwanese Americans Engage in Historical Dialogue
What does it mean to go abroad and live as a Taiwanese or Asian in North America? What colors of memories, desires, and struggles does this migrant identity carry or induce? The specific position of these Taiwanese, or their way of being, is undoubtedly fundamental to the common ground of North American Taiwan studies scholars and organizations––including the NATSA community––since the last century. As Asian American identities and experiences gained more attention in academia, at the previous NATSA conference in 2023, we hosted an event, Taiwanese American as an Aesthetic/Academic/Activist Concern, shedding light on Taiwanese American experiences in diverse fields. The public event of the NATSA conference this year further brought together three distinguished new-generation scholars—Dr. Wendy Cheng (Scripps College), Dr. Wen Liu (Academia Sinica), and Dr. Christopher Fan (University of California, Irvine) to talk about the historical complexities of activism and identity formation of Taiwanese migrants and Asian Americans. Featuring their recently published books—Island X: Taiwanese Student Migrants, Campus Spies, and Cold War Activism (Cheng 2023), Feeling Asian American: Racial Flexibility Between Assimilation and Oppression (Liu 2024), and Asian American Fiction after 1965: Transnational Fantasies of Economic Mobility (Fan 2024), the three scholars not only presented intellectually excellent analysis to the participants and the moderator Dr. Kim Liao (John Jay College, author of Where Every Ghost Has a Name: A Memoir of Taiwanese Independence, 2024) but also relevantly connected them with personal life stories. By revisiting Asian American histories through a reconceptualization of the Cold War, their research not only transcends geographic borders but also expands the epistemological and methodological frameworks of Taiwan Studies.
### Migrant Narratives and Cold War Geopolitics
Wendy Cheng opened the night with the story of her mother, a Taiwanese migrant student who arrived in the United States in the 1970s. From this personal narrative, Cheng delineated an overview of Taiwanese student activists on campus and the political landscape of that era, including how they were labeled as “the Communists and Taiwan independence people” by student spies working for the KMT. Cheng explained that from the first interview to the completion of the manuscript, it took over 12 years to research and write Island X. Using a variety of materials, including political publications, propaganda posters, old photos, and oral history interviews, Cheng’s work delves into the political lives of Taiwanese who came to the United States to study abroad from the 1960s to the 1980s. By uncovering the untold history of this generation of Taiwan Studies scholars, Cheng challenges stereotypes of Taiwanese Americans and highlights their struggles for justice and self-determination amid Cold War geopolitics. She emphasizes that their identity during this period was profoundly shaped by activism and politics, with universities serving as key sites for their social and political formation.
While Cheng’s work heavily emphasizes interviews and archival research, Christopher Fan’s research, although centered on a similar period, critically analyzes the literary creations of diaspora writers and how their unique spatiotemporality shaped their experiences and narratives. Following Cheng’s presentation, Fan introduced another intriguing dimension to understanding the formation of Taiwanese and Asian American identity: class.
As Fan reminded us at the beginning, “What it means for an author to be from Asia is not only a question about race; it’s also a question about class formation.” Fan’s work explores how the immigrant narrative from Northeast Asian American literature, especially contemporary fiction, reflects the clash between arts and sciences, influenced by legacies of modernization from Japan, the US, and China. By analyzing selected works from Taiwanese American writers after 1965, such as Kathy Wang, Charles Yu, and Jade Chang, Fan’s talk engaged in a dialogue with East Asian literature scholar Leo Ching. It directed the audience’s attention to the discourse of trans-imperial modernization and racial formation in the era of deindustrialization, enriching the discussion on Taiwanese American identity.
### Rethinking the Identit(ies) of Taiwanese Americans in Asian American Studies
Unlike the previous speakers, who focused on the impact of geopolitics and class on identity formation, the final speaker, Wen Liu, shifted attention to the point that the other two speakers had briefly mentioned but did not elaborate on rethinking the racial and ethnic identity of Taiwanese Americans through the lens of affective tensions.
Stating that Asian Americans vary widely across cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic lines, Liu described this demographic group as a “paradoxical existence.” She argued that this category of identity is not a coherent racial group but is instead shaped by psychological “racecraft,” which can only be “felt” through narratives of “racial injury.” Liu’s work challenges prevailing myths surrounding Asian American identity, exploring the flexible racial status of Asian Americans as they navigate the tensions between oppression and assimilation. Her nuanced and critical analysis of psychological construction not only dismantles the persisting myth of the “model minority” but also reconsiders strategies for activism and transnational solidarity, echoing the theory of disidentification articulated by queer of color critique scholar Jose Muñoz.
A common thread among the three speakers’ talks was the conspicuous absence or sidelining of the histories and experiences of postwar Taiwanese American immigrants in Asian American studies publications. These immigrants, with their highly educated backgrounds and relatively affluent socioeconomic status, presented a uniquely complex subject for academic inquiry. Coming from different fields of study and personal backgrounds in terms of migration, Cheng, Fan, and Liu employed a wide range of approaches beyond identitarianism to Asian American studies, forging meaningful interconnections across multiple disciplinary, geographical, and temporal boundaries.
For Taiwan Studies, the presentations from the three speakers highlighted the complexities of Taiwan and the haunting problems about Taiwaneseness and Taiwanese American identities. This raised critical questions about the structural, historical, and sociopolitical conditions shaping the uneven processes of racial and class formation among Asian Americans, including Taiwanese migrants. Together, Cheng, Fan, and Liu advocated embracing Taiwanese Americans’ ambivalent and malleable positionality. This insight encouraged us to explore important topics such as the compatibility between left-leaning ideologies and the pro-independence movement, the heterogeneity of Asian American and Taiwanese identities, and the possible alignment between academic pursuits and political commitments. Asked about how knowledge production could react to current global politics, Cheng reminded us that careful reading and writing are still methods and actions worth taking: “It matters to write about what we can teach in class; it matters to write about what we fight for.”
This thought-provoking roundtable discussion created a space for critical reflections on activism, identity, and the experiences of Taiwanese migrants and Asian Americans, fostering a deeper understanding of historical struggles and contemporary challenges. The speakers’ illuminating works and talks engaged with one another, generating new perspectives that have the potential to unsettle the taken-for-granted categories in understanding Asian Americans, both racially and nationally. Additionally, they reflected on the intersections between their personal histories and Taiwanese American historiography. An interesting interpretation from the 2024 NATSA program team is that this dialogue points toward the potentiality of NATSA to serve as a significant site for relearning and reimagining Taiwan-US relations—beyond a one-directional migrant trajectory.
Panchen Lo is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Lo’s research explores interdisciplinary fields, including trans and queer studies, transnational social movements, and feminist anthropology. Lo’s doctoral project focuses on trans politics and activism in Taiwan to rethink gender transitioning.
Ssu-chieh Jessica Fan is a PhD student in Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include Sinophone literatures and cinemas, translation and transculturation, East Asian modernity, and comparative cultural studies. Her dissertation project will focus on the literary and cinema culture of post-martial law Taiwan.
Pei-Chen Cheng is a doctoral student in the Sociology Department at SUNY Albany. Cheng’s research intersects with gender and politics, children/youth and inequality, and care work. Cheng’s current study focuses on the discourse of play rights and its influence on both the social construction of childhood as well as the social reality of marginalized children and youth.
This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘NATSA: Taiwan Studies Matters’.