Primary reading

“Everyday Use.” By Alice Walker, 1973.
Secondary
reading

“Aboriginal Literature in Taiwan?” by Kuo-ch’ing Tu.
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Handouts by
Yu-wen Su
Updated on
June 14, 2016
■ reading
“Everyday Use”
by Alice Walker
1973
http://colleronline.weebly.com/everyday-use-by-alice-walker.html
Source: Walker, Alice. "Everyday Use." The Story and Its Writer. Ed. Anna Charters. Compact 8th ed. Boston: Bedfor/St. Martin's,
2011. 852-858. Print.
1
I will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon. A
yard like this is more comfortable than most people know. It is not just a yard. It is like an extended
living room. When the hard clay is swept clean as a floor and the fine sand around the edges lined
with tiny, irregular grooves, anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree and wait for the
breezes that never come inside the house.
2
Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and
ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eying her sister with a mixture of envy and awe.
She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that “no” is a word the world never
learned to say to her.
3
You’ve no doubt seen those TV shows where the child who has “made it” is confronted, as a
surprise, by her own mother and father, tottering in weakly from backstage. (A pleasant surprise, of
course: What would they do if parent and child came on the show only to curse out and insult each
other?) On TV mother and child embrace and smile into each other’s faces. Sometimes the mother
and father weep, the child wraps them in her arms and leans across the table to tell how she would not
have made it without their help. I have seen these programs.
4
Sometimes I dream a dream in which Dee and I are suddenly brought together on a TV program of
this sort. Out of a dark and soft-seated limousine I am ushered into a bright room filled with many
people. There I meet a smiling, gray, sporty man like Johnny Carson who shakes my hand and tells
me what a fine girl I have. Then we are on the stage and Dee is embracing me with tears in her eyes.
She pins on my dress a large orchid, even though she has told me once that she thinks orchids are
tacky flowers.
5
In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter I wear
flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a
man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for
washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog.
One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had
the meat hung up to chill before nightfall. But of course all this does not show on television. I am the
way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley
pancake. My hair glistens in the hot bright lights. Johnny Carson has much to do to keep up with my
quick and witty tongue.
6
But that is a mistake. I know even before I wake up. Who ever knew a Johnson with a quick
tongue? Who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the eye? It seems to me I have
“Everyday Use” 1
talked to them always with one foot raised in flight, with my head turned in whichever way is farthest
from them. Dee, though. She would always look anyone in the eye. Hesitation was no part of her
nature.
7
“How do I look, Mama?” Maggie says, showing just enough of her thin body enveloped in pink
skirt and red blouse for me to know she’s there, almost hidden by the door.
“Come out into the yard,” I say.
8
Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to
own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him? That is the way my Maggie
walks. She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that
burned the other house to the ground.
9
Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure. She’s a woman now, though
sometimes I forget. How long ago was it that the other house burned? Ten, twelve years? Sometimes I
can still hear the flames and feel Maggie’s arms sticking to me, her hair smoking and her dress falling
off her in little black papery flakes. Her eyes seemed stretched open, blazed open by the flames
reflected in them. And Dee. I see her standing off under the sweet gum tree she used to dig gum out
of; a look of concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy gray board of the house fall in
toward the red-hot brick chimney. Why don’t you do a dance around the ashes? I’d wanted to ask her.
She had hated the house that much.
10
I used to think she hated Maggie, too. But that was before we raised the money, the church and me,
to send her to Augusta1 to school. She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks’
habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. She washed us in a
river of make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn’t necessarily need to know. Pressed
us to her with the serious way she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we seemed
about to understand.
11
Dee wanted nice things. A yellow organdy dress to wear to her graduation 70 from high school;
black pumps to match a green suit she’d made from an old suit somebody gave me. She was
determined to stare down any disaster in her efforts. Her eyelids would not flicker for minutes at a
time. Often I fought off the temptation to shake her. At sixteen she had a style of her own: and knew
what style was.
12
I never had an education myself. After second grade the school was closed down. Don’t ask me
why: in 1927 colored asked fewer questions than they do now. Sometimes Maggie reads to me. She
stumbles along good-naturedly but can’t see well. She knows she is not bright. Like good looks and
money, quickness passed her by. She will marry John Thomas (who has mossy teeth in an earnest
face) and then I’ll be free to sit here and I guess just sing church songs to myself. Although I never
was a good singer. Never could carry a tune. I was always better at a man’s job. I used to love to milk
till I was hooked in the side in’. Cows are soothing and slow and don’t bother you, unless you try to
milk them the wrong way.
13
I have deliberately turned my back on the house. It is three rooms, just like the one that burned,
except the roof is tin; they don’t make shingle roofs any more. There are no real windows, just some
“Everyday Use” 2
holes cut in the sides, like the portholes in a ship, but not round and not square, with rawhide holding
the shutters up on the outside. This house is in a pasture, too, like the other one. No doubt when Dee
sees it she will want to tear it down. She wrote me once that no matter where we “choose” to live, she
will manage to come see us. But she will never bring her friends. Maggie and I thought about this and
Maggie asked me, “Mama, when did Dee ever have any friends?”
14
She had a few. Furtive boys in pink shirts hanging about on washday after school. Nervous girls
who never laughed. Impressed with her they worshiped the well-turned phrase, the cute shape, the
scalding humor that erupted like bubbles in lye. She read to them.
15
When she was courting Jimmy T she didn’t have much time to pay to us, but turned all her
faultfinding power on him. He flew to marry a cheap city girl from a family of ignorant flashy people.
She hardly had time to recompose herself. When she comes I will meet—but there they are!
16
Maggie attempts to make a dash for the house, in her shuffling way, but I stay her with my hand.
“Come back here,” I say. And she stops and tries to dig a well in the sand with her toe.
17
It is hard to see them clearly through the strong sun. But even the first glimpse of leg out of the car
tells me it is Dee. Her feet were always neat- looking, as if God himself had shaped them with a
certain style. From the other side of the car comes a short, stocky man. Hair is all over his head a foot
long and hanging from his chin like a kinky mule tail. I hear Maggie suck in her breath. “Uhnnnh,” is
what it sounds like. Like when you see the wriggling end of a snake just in front of your foot on the
road. “Uhnnnh.”
18
Dee next. A dress down to the ground, in this hot weather. A dress so loud it hurts my eyes. There
are yellows and oranges enough to throw back the light of the sun. I feel my whole face warming
from the heat waves it throws out. Earrings gold, too, and hanging down to her shoulders. Bracelets
dangling and making noises when she moves her arm up to shake the folds of the dress out of her
armpits. The dress is loose and flows, and as she walks closer, I like it.
19
I hear Maggie go “Uhnnnh” again. It is her sister’s hair. It stands straight up like the wool on a
sheep. It is black as night and around the edges are two long pigtails that rope about like small lizards
disappearing behind her ears. e “Wa-su-zo-Tean-o!” she says, coming on in that gliding way the dress
makesher move. The short stocky fellow with the hair to his navel is all grinning and he follows up
with “Asalamalakim, my mother and sister!” He moves to hug Maggie but she falls back, right up
against the back of my chair. I feel her trembling there and when I look up I see the perspiration
falling off her chin.
20
“Don’t get up,” says Dee. Since I am stout it takes something of a push. You can see me trying to
move a second or two before I make it. She turns, showing white heels through her sandals, and goes
back to the car. Out she peeks next with a Polaroid. She stoops down quickly and lines up picture after
picture of me sitting there in front of the house with Maggie cowering behind me. She never takes a
shot without making sure the house is included. When a cow comes nibbling around the edge of the
yard she snaps it and me and Maggie and the house. Then she puts the Polaroid in the back seat of the
car, and comes up and kisses me on the forehead.
21
Meanwhile Asalamalakim is going through motions with Maggie’s hand. Maggie’s hand is as limp
“Everyday Use” 3
as a fish, and probably as cold, despite the sweat, and she keeps trying to pull it back. It looks like
Asalamalakim wants to shake hands but wants to do it fancy. Or maybe he don’t know how people
shake hands. Anyhow, he soon gives up on Maggie.
22
“Well,” I say. “Dee.”
“No, Mama,” she says. “Not ‘Dee,’ Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo!”
“What happened to ‘Dee’?” I wanted to know.
“She’s dead,” Wangero said. “I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who
oppress me.”
23
“You know as well as me you was named after your aunt Dicie,” I said. Dicie is my sister. She
named Dee. We called her “Big Dee” after Dee was born. “But who was she named after?” asked
Wangero.
“I guess after Grandma Dee,” I said.
“And who was she named after?” asked Wangero.
“Her mother,” I said, and saw Wangero was getting tired. “That’s about as far back as I can trace
it,” I said. Though, in fact, I probably could have carried it back beyond the Civil War through the
branches.
“Well,” said Asalamalakim, “there you are.”
“Uhnnnh,” I heard Maggie say.
“There I was not,” I said, “before ‘Dicie’ cropped up in our family, so why should I try to trace it
that far back?”
24
He just stood there grinning, looking down on me like somebody inspecting a Model A car. Every
once in a while he and Wangero sent eye signals over my head.
“How do you pronounce this name?” I asked.
“You don’t have to call me by it if you don’t want to,” said Wangero. “Why shouldn’t I?” I asked.
“If that’s what you want us to call you, we’ll call you.”
“I know it might sound awkward at first,” said Wangero.
“I’ll get used to it,” I said. “Ream it out again.”
Well, soon we got the name out of the way. Asalamalakim had a name twice as long and three times
as hard. After I tripped over it two or three times he told me to just call him Hakim-a-barber.5 I
wanted to ask him was he a barber, but I didn’t really think he was, so I didn’t ask.
25
“You must belong to those beef-cattle peoples down the road,” I said. They said “Asalamalakim”
when they met you, too, but they didn’t shake hands. Always too busy: feeding the cattle, fixing the
fences, putting up salt-lick shelters, throwing down hay. When the white folks poisoned some of the
herd the men stayed up all night with rifles in their hands. I walked a mile and a half just to see the
sight.
26
Hakim-a-barber said, “I accept some of their doctrines, but farming and raising cattle is not my
style.” (They didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask, whether Wangero (Dee) had really gone and married
him.)
27
We sat down to eat and right away he said he didn’t eat collards and pork was unclean. Wangero,
“Everyday Use” 4
though, went on through the chitlins and corn bread, the greens and everything else. She talked a blue
streak over the sweet potatoes. Everything delighted her. Even the fact that we still used the benches
her daddy made for the table when we couldn’t afford to buy chairs.
28
“Oh, Mama!” she cried. Then turned to Hakim-a-barber. “I never knew how lovely these benches
are. You can feel the rump prints,” she said, running her hands underneath her and along the bench.
Then she gave a sigh and her hand closed over Grandma Dee’s butter dish. “That’s it!” she said. “I
knew there was something I wanted to ask you if I could have.” She jumped up from the table and
went over in the corner where the churn stood, the milk in it clabber by now. She looked at the churn
and looked at it.
29
“This churn top is what I need,” she said. “Didn’t Uncle Buddy whittle it out of a tree you all used
to have?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Uh huh,” she said happily. “And I want the dasher,7 too.”
“Uncle Buddy whittle that, too?” asked the barber. Dee (Wangero) looked up at me.
“Aunt Dee’s first husband whittled the dash,” said Maggie so low you almost
couldn’t hear her. “His name was Henry, but they called him Stash.”
“Maggie’s brain is like an elephant’s,” Wangero said, laughing. “I can use the churn top as a
centerpiece for the alcove table,” she said, sliding a plate over the churn, “and I’ll think of something
artistic to do with the dasher.”
30
When she finished wrapping the dasher the handle stuck out. I took it for a moment in my hands.
You didn’t even have to look close to see where hands pushing the dasher up and down to make butter
had left a kind of sink in the wood. In fact, there were a lot of small sinks; you could see where
thumbs and fingers had sunk into the wood. It was beautiful light yellow wood, from a tree that grew
in the yard where Big Dee and Stash had lived.
31
After dinner Dee (Wangero) went to the trunk at the foot of my bed and started rifling through it.
Maggie hung back in the kitchen over the dishpan. Out came Wangero with two quilts. They had been
pieced by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee and me had hung them on the quilt frames on the front
porch and quilted them. One was in the Lone Star pattern. The other was Walk Around the Mountain.
In both of them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago. Bits and
pieces of Grandpa Jarrell’s Paisley shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece, about the size of a penny
matchbox, that was from Great Grandpa Ezra’s uniform that he wore in the Civil War.
32
“Mama,” Wangero said sweet as a bird. “Can I have these old quilts?”
I heard something fall in the kitchen, and a minute later the kitchen door slammed.
“Why don’t you take one or two of the others?” I asked. “These old things was just done by me and
Big Dee from some tops your grandma pieced before she died.”
“No,” said Wangero. “I don’t want those. They are stitched around the borders by machine.”
“That’ll make them last better,” I said.
“That’s not the point,” said Wangero. “These are all pieces of dresses Grandma used to wear. She
did all this stitching by hand. Imagine!” She held the quilts securely in her arms, stroking them.
“Everyday Use” 5
33
“Some of the pieces, like those lavender ones, come from old clothes her mother handed down to
her,” I said, moving up to touch the quilts. Dee (Wangero) moved back just enough so that I couldn’t
reach the quilts. They already belonged to her.
“Imagine!” she breathed again, clutching them closely to her bosom.
“The truth is,” I said, “I promised to give them quilts to Maggie, for when she marries John
Thomas.”
She gasped like a bee had stung her.
“Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts!” she said. “She’d probably be backward enough to put them
to everyday use.”
34
“I reckon she would,” I said. “God knows I been saving ’em for long enough with nobody
using ’em. I hope she will!” I didn’t want to bring up how I had offered Dee (Wangero) a quilt when
she went away to college. Then she had told me they were old-fashioned, out of style.
“But they’re priceless!” she was saying now, furiously; for she has a temper. “Maggie would put
them on the bed and in five years they’d be in rags. Less than that!”
35
“She can always make some more,” I said. “Maggie knows how to quilt.”
Dee (Wangero) looked at me with hatred. “You just will not understand. The point is these quilts,
these quilts!”
“Well,” I said, stumped. “What would you do with them?”
“Hang them,” she said. As if that was the only thing you could do with quilts.
Maggie by now was standing in the door. I could almost hear the sound her feet made as they scraped
over each other.
“She can have them, Mama,” she said, like somebody used to never winning anything, or having
anything reserved for her. “I can ’member Grandma Dee without the quilts.”
36
I looked at her hard. She had filled her bottom lip with checkerberry snuff and it gave her face a
kind of dopey, hangdog look. It was Grandma Dee and Big Dee who taught her how to quilt herself.
She stood there with her scarred hands hidden in the folds of her skirt. She looked at her sister with
something like fear but she wasn’t mad at her. This was Maggie’s portion. This was the way she knew
God to work.
37
When I looked at her like that something hit me in the top of my head and ran down to the soles of
my feet. Just like when I’m in church and the spirit of God touches me and I get happy and shout. I
did something I never had done before: hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her on into the room,
snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero’s hands and dumped them into Maggie’s lap. Maggie just sat
there on my bed with her mouth open.
38
“Take one or two of the others,” I said to Dee.
But she turned without a word and went out to Hakim-a-barber.
“You just don’t understand,” she said, as Maggie and I came out to the car. “What don’t I
understand?” I wanted to know.
“Your heritage,” she said. And then she turned to Maggie, kissed her, and
said, “You ought to try to make something of yourself, too, Maggie. It’s really a new day for us. But
“Everyday Use” 6
from the way you and Mama still live you’d never know it.”
39
She put on some sunglasses that hide everything above the tip of her nose and her chin.
Maggie smiled; maybe at the sunglasses. But a real smile, not scared. After we watched the car dust
settle I asked Maggie to bring me a dip of snuff. And then the two of us sat there just enjoying, until it
was time to go in the house and go to bed.
Alice Walker (1944-)
Source: < http://www.gradesaver.com/author/alice-walker>, 2016/6/14
Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944 in Putnam County, Georgia. She is an accomplished American
poet, novelist, and activist. Walker was the eighth and youngest child of Minnie Tallulah Grant Walker and
Willie Lee Walker. Her father was a poor sharecropper who once remarked that Alice was "wonderful at
math but a terrible farmer." In the summer of 1952, Walker was blinded in her right eye by a BB gun pellet
while playing with her brother. Alice grew up in an environment rife with racism and poverty, which, along
with her passion for gender issues, remains a large part of her narratives.
To help send her to college, Walker's mother worked eleven-hour days as a maid for a meager seventeen
dollars a week. (White) Walker flourished in an academic environment. After two years at Spelman College,
she received a scholarship to Sarah Lawrence College in New York. She became one of a chosen few young
black students to attend the prestigious school. Walker was involved with many civil rights demonstrations,
and in 1962 she was invited to the home of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
After graduating in 1965, Walker became a social worker and teacher, while remaining heavily invested and
involved in the Civil Rights Movement. As a writer in residence at Jackson State College and Tougaloo
College, she taught poetry while working on her own poetry and fiction. She contributed to groundbreaking
feminist Ms. magazine in the late 60s, writing a piece about the unappreciated work of African-American
author Zora Neale Hurston. Her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland was published in 1970.
Meridian, Walker's second novel was published six years later.
She wrote the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple (1982) for which she won the National Book
Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The novel was adapted into an acclaimed film directed by Steven
Spielberg in 1985, starring Whoopi Goldberg as protagonist Celie Harris. The novel and film trace Celie's
life in the early 20th century American south, and her struggles with poverty, racism, sexism and violence,
and the female friendship that empowers her.
Walker's work, including Everyday Use, can be found in many popular anthologies of American fiction and
poetry. She continues to be a prominent social and political activist.
Source: < https://www.questia.com/magazine/1P3-44716922/quilting-a-legacy>, 2016/6/14
“Quilting a Legacy”, by Roland L. Freeman (Article excerpt)
“Everyday Use” 7
Well, my mother was a quilter, and I remember many, many afternoons of my mother and the
neighborhood women sitting on the porch around the quilting frame, quilting and talking, you know; getting
up to stir something on the stove and coming back and sitting down.
My mother also had a frame inside the house. Sometimes during the winter she would quilt and she often
pieced quilts. Piecing . . . I’m really more of a piecer, actually, than I am a quilter, because I can get as far as
piecing all of the little squares or sections together, and sometimes putting them together intobig blocks, but
then I always have to call in help—spreading it out on the frame, or spreading it out on the floor and putting
the batting in and doing the actual quilting.
[The first quilt] I worked on [was] the In Love and Trouble quilt. And I did that one when I was living in
Mississippi. It was during a period when we were wearing African-inspired dresses. So all of the pieces are
from dresses that I actually wore. This yellow and black fabric I bought when I was in Uganda, and I had a
beautiful dress made of it that I wore and wore and wore and eventually I couldn’t wear it any more; partly I
had worn it out and also I was pregnant, so it didn’t fit, and I used that and I used the red and white and black,
which was a long, floor- length dress that I had when I was pregnant with my daughter, Rebecca, who is now
twenty-three. I took these things apart or I used scraps. I put them together in this quilt, because it just
seemed perfect.
Mississippi was full of political and social struggle, and regular quilts were all African American with
emphasis on being here in the United States. But because of the African consciousness that was being raised
and the way that we were all wearing our hair in naturals and wearing all of these African dresses, I felt the
need to blend these two traditions. So it’s a quilt of great memory and importance to me. I use it a lot and
that’s why it’s so worn.
Pre-reading discussion:
1.
What is your impression of Taiwan’s cultural heritage?
2.
What are the motivation for people to celebrate their cultural heritage or tradition?
3.
How does cultural heritage constitute ways of thinking for the communities members?
4.
Do you feel connected to your cultural heritage or do you identify/admire more with other cultures?
Why or why not?
5.
How has your education taught you to perceive or appreciate your cultural heritage?
Questions for the reading:
6.
What kinds of differences exist between Dee and Maggie?
7.
Why does Mama daydreams about going on a show?
8.
What are the conflicts between Dee and her mother and sister?
9.
What is the reason that Dee does not want Maggie to have the quilt?
10. Why does Maggie have a real smile at the end of the story?
“Everyday Use” 8
Post-reading discussion:
11. Why is the short story entitled “Everyday Use”? What does the quilt symbolize?
12. In your opinion, how does a person’s culture and family heritage influence his/her self-identity?
13. How do ceremonies or traditions play an important role in our daily lives? What are their functions?
14. Are there universal qualities or characteristics of cultural ceremonies or heritage in different countries?
“Aboriginal Literature in Taiwan”
by Kuo-ch’ing Tu
http://mlbpark.donga.com/mlbpark/b.php?p=1&b=bullpen2&id=5005288&select=title&query=&user=&reply=
Source: < http://www.eastasian.ucsb.edu/projects/fswlc/tlsd/research/Journal03/foreword3e.html>, 2016/6/17
“Aboriginal Literature in Taiwan”, by Kuo-ch'ing Tu (Article excerpt)
1
The so-called "aboriginal literature in Taiwan" refers to literary works with the theme or subject
matter related to the life, culture, thoughts, and feelings of the aboriginal peoples in Taiwan,
regardless of whether the author is a Han Chinese or an aborigine. The development of aboriginal
literature in Taiwan can be divided into three phases.
2
The first phase exhibits the oral literature in the form of myths, legends, and ballads as handed
down from one generation to another among the various tribes of the aboriginal peoples. Because the
aboriginal peoples have never had records in writing, oral transmission had become the only way to
preserve literary experiences. In the early thirties during the Japanese rule, the Japanese linguistic
professors at Taihoku [Taipei] Imperial University, Ogawa Hisayoshi and Asai Erin, gathered together
two hundred eighty-four aboriginal stories and legends, which they recorded in Japanese and in the
original languages by romanization, thus preserving rare and valuable data A Collection of Taiwan
Native Tribes' Myths and Stories in the Original Languages, published in 1935 by Toko Shoin. The
Taiwanese poet Ch'en Ch'ien-wu brought together similar stories and translated from this repertoire
forty-nine pieces into Chinese and published them in 1991. To record the oral literature of the
aboriginal peoples is an urgent project in progress carried on by concerned scholars in Taiwan.
3
The second phase of aboriginal literature in Taiwan displays the works written by Japanese or Han
Chinese based on the records of oral narration. During the colonial period, Japanese writers Sato
Haruo, Oshika Taku, Nakamura Chihei, Sakaguchi Reiko, and Nishikawa Mitsuru all wrote about the
subject. The father of Taiwan literature, Lai He, was indeed a person of foresight, and wrote as early
as the twenties and thirties poems about the pure and simple life of the aboriginal world, such as
Floating the Boat on Pearl Lake at Night on the Fourteenth of the First Month.
4
He had a deep sympathy for the Wu-she Incident in revolt against the Japanese, as expressed in the
poem Nan-kuo ai-ko (A Doleful Song of the Southland); and he also, from the standpoint of the
aborigines, reflected upon the history of the aboriginal peoples oppressed by the Han Chinese, as in
“Everyday Use” 9
Shih-yin hua-fan (Civilized Aborigines at Shih-yin). After the war, among the Han Chinese writers
who wrote about the aboriginal peoples, Chung Li-he probably is the earliest with his Chia-li p'o (An
Aboriginal Grandma) published in 1960.
5
The earliest aboriginal writer is Ch'en Ying-hsiung of the Paiwan tribe, whose Y-wai meng-hen
(Traces of Dreams in Foreign Lands), published by the Commercial Press in Taiwan in 1971, is
considered the first collection of short stories by an individual aboriginal writer in the history of
Taiwan literature, although the author, limited by the times, completely accepted Han Chinese
viewpoints without expressing the self-consciousness of an aborigine. The writer who treated
aboriginal subjects more often than anyone else is Chung Chao-cheng, who published Ma-hei-p'o
feng-y (The Changing Winds and Clouds at Ma-hei-p'o) and Ma-li-k'e-wan ying-hsiung-chuan (The
Heroes of Ma-li-ke-wan) in the seventies, as well as Kao-shan tsu-ch (A High Mountains Suite) and
Pei-nan p'ing-yuan (The Puyuma Plains) in the eighties.
6
The third phase of aboriginal literature in Taiwan consists of works written in Chinese since the
eighties by aboriginal writers with a distinct ethnic consciousness. Historically this is the debut of
authentic aboriginal literature in Taiwan by aboriginal writers expressing their own unique life
experience and innermost feelings. As mentioned above, the awakening of the self-consciousness of
the aborigines started to manifest itself in the eighties, and is revealed in the recognition of the tragic
destiny of the aborigines in the larger society, namely, for survival "men go out to sea" to take up hard
work on oceangoing freighters and "women go down to the sea" to suffer in the abyss of misery as
prostitutes.
7
This literature also arouses the ethnic consciousness of the aboriginal peoples living in a society
dominated by the majority Han Chinese, and it creates an awareness of crisis at the rapid decline of
the aboriginal cultures. The aboriginal writers who attracted general attention for the first time in the
literary circles of Taiwan were T'o-pa-ssu Ta-ma-p'i-ma of the Bunun tribe, whose Chinese name is
T'ien Ya-ke, and Mo-na-neng of the Paiwan tribe, whose Chinese name is Tseng Shun-wang.
T'o-pa-ssu graduated from Kao-hsiung Medical College and started to publish works in 1983; his
short story "The Last Hunter" won him the Wu Cho-liu Literary Award in 1986. His works are
recognized as "imbued with a unique mode of thinking as an aborigine" and let readers feel that they
are more than anything else "authentic Taiwanese short stories."
8
Mo-na-neng graduated from a junior high school and could not enter a teachers' college because of
his poor vision. He left his hometown and struggled at physical labor in the city. Since he became
completely blind, he has been making a living as a masseur in Taipei. He started to publish his poems
in 1984. His collected poems Mei-li te tao-sui (Beautiful Ears of Rice), published in 1989, are "songs
of the heart stitched together in braille by a blind man," and "the footprints of the soul" of a poet who
has lost the "window of his soul." The poet's greatest wish is that his works can help the aboriginal
peoples, who are "facing overall discrimination, political and economic exploitation, and cultural
crisis in the modern society of Taiwan," so that they will "find hope in desperation and joy in
grievance."
9
As explained above, the call of aboriginal activism has awakened the Han Chinese to reflect on
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their various attitudes toward the aborigines in the past, and consequently we have The Sad
Mountains and Forests-Selected Stories of the Aborigines in Taiwan, compiled by the writer Wu
Chin-fa and published in 1987. This anthology includes eleven short stories written by nine Han
Chinese and aboriginal writers and represents the subject fairly well. As the editor confessed in the
preface, this "is only the first act of my requital and atonement toward the aborigines in Taiwan."
10
Furthermore in 1989, the same author compiled another anthology, Wishing to Marry an
Aborigine-Selected Essays of the Aborigines in Taiwan, and atoned again on behalf of the ancestors of
the Han Chinese for what they did in the past.
Kuo-ch'ing Tu
Source: < http://www.eastasian.ucsb.edu/home/faculty/kuo-ching-tu/>, 2016/6/17
Kuo-ch’ing Tu was born in Taichung, Taiwan, and graduated from National Taiwan University in 1963 with
a major in English Literature. He received his M.A. in Japanese literature from Kwansei Gakuin University
in 1970 and his Ph.D. in Chinese Literature from Stanford in 1974. His research interests include Chinese
literature, Chinese poetics and literary theories,Taiwan Literature, comparative literature East and West, and
worldwide literatures in Chinese. He is the author of numerous books of poetry in Chinese, as well as
translator of English, Japanese, and French works into Chinese and of contemporary works of Chinese into
English. He is the co-editor of Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series, published by the Forum for the
Study of World Literatures in Chinese at UCSB. Professor Tu has received research grants from NEH, the
Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation, the Toyota Foundation, as well as the Award for Lifelong Achievement in
Translation from the Council for Cultural Affairs, Republic of China.
Source: < http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2013/12/26/2003579807>, 2016/6/14
“A growing grassroots movement: Arts may be giving more people a reason to volunteer”, by Jerome
Keating, in 2013
Yosifu, a fine arts painter and Amis Aborigine, has just completed an art workshop for some of Taitung’s
Aboriginal youth. “I came back [to Taiwan] and did it because I wanted to give back to my people and help
other indigenous artists develop,” he told the Taipei Times.
Yosifu, who lives in Edinburgh, promotes Taiwan’s indigenous culture throughout Europe. As one of
the first Taiwanese Aborigines to achieve international artistic success and recognition, he typifies the need
for involvement at the grassroots level. The Council of Indigenous Peoples and government agencies can set
policies and hold conferences such as the recent 2013 International Austronesian Conference, but the level,
extent and degree to which policies and actions are carried out often depends more on people at the
grassroots level. Fortunately, in Taiwan that level is increasing.
There’s no one event or phenomenon that triggered this recent grassroots surge of involvement, though
the increased use and ability of Facebook, YouTube and other social media may be a factor. In addition, art
is a common denominator in many of the new grassroots projects.
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Elise Tseng (曾珮貞) left a career in the art industry in 2011 to take charge of the Taiwan Cultural &
Creative Platform Foundation. “I saw that despite Taiwan having many artists, [art] had not yet touched
and explored its basic base, namely its indigenous people,” Tseng said. Her foundation sponsors workshops
such as the one held by Yosifu. After researching Australian models of promoting indigenous culture, Tseng
and the foundation used them to organize art and festivals. “We strive to show [Aborigines the] environment
of the urban city that they will face as artists and [encourage them] to dream big.” Dream Big is in fact the
title of one of their projects.
A different unique story is that of American Tony Coolidge, who discovered his Atayal heritage when
living in the US. This led to his involvement with indigenous peoples and the founding of Atayal, a nonprofit
organization that tries to bring together indigenous cultures from around the world. His award-winning film
Voices in the Clouds premiered in 2010. “It was my personal roots trip back to my heritage,” Coolidge said.
Earlier this month, Coolidge spearheaded a project called Tap Root, a Journey of Self-Discovery, in which
Maori film students from New Zealand toured Taiwan and shared their Austronesian culture and experiences.
This is not without some irony since they arrived during the 2013 International Austronesian Conference but
were not acknowledged by it.
Kolas Yotaka, a producer and presenter at Taiwan Indigenous TV, says that art is not the only platform
for involvement. Some groups focus on political issues —Yotaka named the Taiwan Indigenous Tribal
Movement League (台灣部落行動聯盟) led by Omi Wilang of the Taiwan Presbyterian Church, and the
Smoke Signals League. “But even with the political, art can take a supportive role,” Yotaka said. Art and
culture certainly seem to be the vehicle that allows all to get involved.
Minna Hsu (徐敏娜), a Taiwanese American working on a Ph.D in Human Geography at Macquarie
University in Sydney, Australia, decided to join the newly formed Austronesian Cultural and Economic
Cooperative Association because she believes that it is important to “promote awareness of and cooperation
between the indigenous cultures of Taiwan and abroad.” Taiwan’s expat community is also finding art to be
a less threatening environment for involvement.
Jonathan Burke, a director in the customer service field, is a permanent resident in Taiwan who has long
been involved in volunteer work. “It is an expression of my Christian faith to assist and help socially
marginalized groups.” In 2011, he started participating in photography workshops that help Aboriginal youth
expand their artistic expression.
Yosifu says government assistance is important, but that the grassroots may be where it’s at, and that art is
proving to be the medium. “I came to find a sense of pride and acceptance in Europe first by trying modern
art. Success there led me to realize I should also be proud of my indigenous heritage and incorporate that into
my art. I even took back my tribal name, Yosifu. Now I return regularly to help others,” he said.
1.
Please point out and elaborate on Tu’s three phases of Taiwan’s aboriginal literature. Do you agree/
disagree on this division and why? Share an aboriginal story that you know.
2.
Please share your insights on the changes of Taiwan cultural movement in recent years. How social
media or public opinions affect this issue?
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
Group work: Do a research on the aftermath of “black pride” with other literary works or social
perception.

Introduce another cultural movement around the world in your group.

Where did your ancestor originally come form?Draw and introduce your family tree and share a family
story.

What is your family heritage? Share a family story that influences you till now.
“Everyday Use” 13