Literature and Poetry

「寫作是最後一道防線」：巴勒斯坦詩人亞赫亞·哈馬納專訪

Angelina Guo
哈馬納（Yahya Al Hamarna）是來自加薩走廊的巴勒斯坦作家、學者和難民。他曾在加薩的愛資哈爾（Al-Azhar）大學研修政治學、國際關係與外交。他的寫作聚焦於人權、正義、國際法與全球政治，而他的詩歌則探索戰爭下的記憶、流放、愛與生存。他的作品透過保留意圖被暴力所抹殺的那些聲音、場景和日常點滴而深深錕刻在巴勒斯坦的當代記憶中。他的首部充滿辛酸的詩集《我的聲音無法被炸毀》（My Voice Cannot Be Bombed）於2025年由伊斯克拉書局（Iskra Books）發表。他的許多摘錄透過社群媒體流向世界。由卡亞爾（Elissa Kayal），薩圖夫（Nada Sattouf）與杜福爾（Alycia Dufour）共同翻譯的《我的聲音無法被炸毀》法語版本最近由魁北克的多林出版社（Éditions de la Rue Dorion）與法國的八月伯恩出版社（Burn∼Août）出版。...
Arts and CultureLiterature and PoetrySelf-DeterminationSocial MovementsYouth Movements中文3 min read

“Writing is the Last Line of Defense”: An Interview with Palestinian Poet Yahya Al Hamarna

Angelina Guo
Yahya Al Hamarna is a Palestinian writer, researcher, and refugee from the Gaza Strip. He studied Political Science, International Relations, and Diplomacy at Al-Azhar University in Gaza. His writing focuses on human rights, justice, international law, and global politics, while his poetry explores memory, exile, love, and survival in times of war. His work carves deeply into the living memory of Palestine, preserving the voices, places, and everyday moments that violence seeks to erase. His poignant debut poetry collection, My Voice Cannot Be Bombed, was published by Iskra Books in 2025. Through social media, excerpts have travelled around the world, and a full French translation by Elissa Kayal and Nada Sattouf has most recently been published by Éditions de la Rue Dorion in Quebec and Burn∼Août in France....
Arts and CultureEnglishLiterature and PoetrySelf-DeterminationSocial MovementsYouth Movements17 min read

Review: Ká-sióng, A Collection of Taiwanese Short Fiction

Maya Rubin
Literary translation is having a moment, particularly in Taiwan. You might have seen the recent, glowing New York Times profile of Tilted Axis, a British publisher specializing in translated literature, or witnessed the frenzy over Lin King and Yang Shuang-zi (楊双子)’s National Book Award win for King’s brilliant translation of Taiwan Travelogue. Riding that wave is Ká-sióng (the Taiwanese Hokkien romanization of 假想), a collection of five newly translated Taiwanese short stories recently published by Strangers Press in partnership with the Taiwan Ministry of Culture, National Museum of Taiwan Literature, and Books from Taiwan. The stories in Ká-sióng, each of which has a different author and translator, are almost dizzyingly diverse, from body horror in an Indigenous Atayal village to sci-fi memory manipulation in a futuristic, flooded Taipei. The stories–which are presented in arbitrary sequence–offer a polyphonic, cacophonous vision of Taiwanese fiction and culture...
April 2025Arts and CultureEnglishLiterature and Poetry14 min read

Philosophy Against Nuclear Power

Shen Yun-Yen
The nuclear bomb certainly posed a serious problem for contemporary philosophy. From Heidegger to Arendt to Marcuse, philosophy in the mid-20th century struggled to deal with this all-annihilating artificial production. Unfortunately, most of these philosophers did not analyze the complex relationships between nuclear technology, capital, state, etc. They did not even attempt to analyze the history or the ABCs of this technology. Hence while they criticized the “atomization” of contemporary society, they did not even notice that the contemporary world is one in which the atom is no longer truly an “atom,” that is, something that cannot be split. What’s worse, philosophy seemed to be totally incapable of dealing with nuclear power. It’s simply beyond the limits of both reason and imagination...
Arts and CultureDecember 2024EnglishLiterature and PoetrySelf-DeterminationSocial MovementsYouth Movements15 min read

Li Kotomi Comes Out as Transgender After Being Outed by Taiwan’s Anti-Gender Movement

Yo-Ling Chen
Yesterday evening on Transgender Day of Remembrance, critically acclaimed Taiwanese fiction writer Li Kotomi reluctantly issued a public statement disclosing her transgender status after years of being outed, harassed, and doxxed online by anti-gender accounts in Taiwan. Shortly after, Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association issued a statement in support of Li. In addition to her personal TDOR statement, Li also co-organized a “Statement by Authors in Japan Opposing LGBTQ+ Discrimination,” which was signed by 51 novelists in Japan and was released earlier in the day. Li’s public response to her outing comes in the wake of yet another surge in anti-gender discourse online and draws attention to the increasingly transnational character of anti-gender mobilizations in Taiwan...
Arts and CultureEnglishGender/SexualityLiterature and PoetryNovember 2024Social Movements12 min read

Calling For a Return to Sinocentrism in the Name of Opposing It: Responding to ‘Reconsidering Sinophone Studies’

Brian Hioe
The International Journal of Taiwan Studies, one of the flagship journals of the discipline, published an unusual piece several months ago by Flair Donglai Shi. Though framed as an attack on Shih Shu-mei’s concept of the Sinophone, the crux of the piece’s argument is effectively that Taiwan studies is insufficiently Sinocentric...
Arts and CultureEnglishJuly 2021Literature and Poetry8 min read