While Taiwanese migrants who came to the United States as students from the 1960s through the 1980s are often depicted as compliant model minorities, many were in fact deeply political. Shaped by Taiwan’s colonial history and influenced by the global social movements of their times, they fought to make Taiwanese people visible as subjects of injustice and deserving of self-determination. Wendy Cheng is the author of Island X: Taiwanese Student Migrants, Campus Spies, and Cold War Activism. She joins us to discuss her book, which documents how Taiwanese Americans developed tight-knit social networks as infrastructures for identity formation, consciousness development, and anticolonial activism on US campuses.
Dr. Cheng will be joining us for a discussion on her new book during our February International Book Club on Thursday, February 29th at 4pm! Register with the “Register Here” button above.
The first 20 people to register will receive a free copy of the book (US mailing addresses only).
About Island X
Island X delves into the compelling political lives of Taiwanese migrants who came to the United States as students from the 1960s through the 1980s. Often depicted as compliant model minorities, many were in fact deeply political, shaped by Taiwan’s colonial history and influenced by the global social movements of their times. As activists, they fought to make Taiwanese people visible as subjects of injustice and deserving of self-determination.
Under the distorting shadows of Cold War geopolitics, the Kuomintang regime and collaborators across US campuses attempted to control Taiwanese in the diaspora through extralegal surveillance and violence, including harassment, blacklisting, imprisonment, and even murder. Drawing on interviews with student activists and extensive archival research, Wendy Cheng documents how Taiwanese Americans developed tight-knit social networks as infrastructures for identity formation, consciousness development, and anticolonial activism. They fought for Taiwanese independence, opposed state persecution and oppression, and participated in global political movements. Raising questions about historical memory and Cold War circuits of power, Island X is a testament to the lives and advocacy of a generation of Taiwanese American activists. Learn more about Island X on the UW Press page here
About Wendy Cheng
Wendy Cheng is Professor of American Studies at Scripps College and Core Faculty in the Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies. She received her A.B. from Harvard University in English and American Language and Literature, her M.A. in Geography from UC Berkeley, and her Ph.D. in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on race and ethnicity, comparative racialization, critical geography, urban and suburban studies, and diaspora. Her book, The Changs Next Door to the Díazes: Remapping Race in Suburban California (University of Minnesota Press, 2013), won the 2014 Book Award from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Asia and Asian America. Her coauthored book, A People’s Guide to Los Angeles (with Laura Pulido and Laura Barraclough; University of California Press, 2012), for which she was also the photographer, won the Association of American Geographers’ Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography and the SCIBA Nonfiction Award. Her current research projects focus on the political activism of Taiwanese student migrants to the United States and racial plunder in everyday landscapes.
Cheng is a board member of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Amerasia Journal, and the Journal of Asian American Studies, and was a founding member of Arizona Critical Ethnic Studies. She coedits A People’s Guide book series with University of California Press. For more information, please visit: wendycheng.com
