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Taipei at Daybreak
An Asian American coming-of-age novel set amongst social protests of the early 2010s in East Asia.
2014 was the year of the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan, a moment that has Taiwanese defined politics for the past decade. Its aftermath saw a wave of young politicians run for and win office in Taiwan, reversing the course of Taiwan’s destiny at a time in which it seemed like unification with China was all but inevitable.
Taipei at Daybreak is a literary fiction novel about a Taiwanese American participant in the Sunflower Movement. Set between 2011 and 2016, the protagonist, referred to as Q. or Q.Q., drifts between social movements in America and Asia, including Occupy Wall Street in New York City in Fall 2011, the post-Fukushima protest movement in Tokyo in Spring 2012 —then the largest social movement in Japan since the 1960s —and finally the Sunflower Movement in Spring 2014.
Eventually becoming a journalist in the wake of the Sunflower Movement, Q. struggles internally with the self-destructive, violent impulses that drive him to the frontlines of social movements out of a profound sense of ennui. Further contributing to his nihilistic streak are those around him, such as Aoi, a Japanese artist living in New York City, who seems to be driven by a sense of meaninglessness in life, and Ray, his Taiwanese confidant and colleague seeking connection but also oblivion.
2014 was the year of the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan, a moment that has Taiwanese defined politics for the past decade. Its aftermath saw a wave of young politicians run for and win office in Taiwan, reversing the course of Taiwan’s destiny at a time in which it seemed like unification with China was all but inevitable.
Taipei at Daybreak is a literary fiction novel about a Taiwanese American participant in the Sunflower Movement. Set between 2011 and 2016, the protagonist, referred to as Q. or Q.Q., drifts between social movements in America and Asia, including Occupy Wall Street in New York City in Fall 2011, the post-Fukushima protest movement in Tokyo in Spring 2012 —then the largest social movement in Japan since the 1960s —and finally the Sunflower Movement in Spring 2014.
Eventually becoming a journalist in the wake of the Sunflower Movement, Q. struggles internally with the self-destructive, violent impulses that drive him to the frontlines of social movements out of a profound sense of ennui. Further contributing to his nihilistic streak are those around him, such as Aoi, a Japanese artist living in New York City, who seems to be driven by a sense of meaninglessness in life, and Ray, his Taiwanese confidant and colleague seeking connection but also oblivion.
- GenresFiction
195 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 14, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 3, 2024
This book features a floating, drifting narrative as QQ recalls and reflects on his time in Asia, particularly Japan and Taiwan. It’s a collection of meandering thoughts and fragmented memories, exploring strong themes of identity, purpose, and how to create meaning in life.
QQ finds meaning through activism and reconnecting with his roots in Taiwan. One standout quote captures this sentiment: “We all knew that we lacked the future that our parents were promised from early on, and so all we had were our bonds with each other” (pg. 44). This reflects the frustration of youth in Taiwan and the shared sense of purpose that unites them, even for an expat like QQ.
The second part delves deeper into Taiwan’s political landscape, offering a historical overview. Here, QQ helps establish a newspaper to shed light on underreported Taiwanese issues in his quest to find meaning.
One of the core themes is the “in-betweenness” of being a first-generation Asian American. QQ describes this as feeling like “an orphan of Asia and America” (pg. 74), encapsulating the sense of not belonging fully to either culture.
While the story explores meaningful themes, I found it not particularly compelling. QQ’s narrative of emptiness felt excessive at times, with limited character growth, which made it harder to connect. However, the dialogue was well-crafted and enjoyable.
This book is best read in smaller chunks to fully digest and reflect on its themes.
Thank you NetGalley and Repeater Books for the ARC of this book.
QQ finds meaning through activism and reconnecting with his roots in Taiwan. One standout quote captures this sentiment: “We all knew that we lacked the future that our parents were promised from early on, and so all we had were our bonds with each other” (pg. 44). This reflects the frustration of youth in Taiwan and the shared sense of purpose that unites them, even for an expat like QQ.
The second part delves deeper into Taiwan’s political landscape, offering a historical overview. Here, QQ helps establish a newspaper to shed light on underreported Taiwanese issues in his quest to find meaning.
One of the core themes is the “in-betweenness” of being a first-generation Asian American. QQ describes this as feeling like “an orphan of Asia and America” (pg. 74), encapsulating the sense of not belonging fully to either culture.
While the story explores meaningful themes, I found it not particularly compelling. QQ’s narrative of emptiness felt excessive at times, with limited character growth, which made it harder to connect. However, the dialogue was well-crafted and enjoyable.
This book is best read in smaller chunks to fully digest and reflect on its themes.
Thank you NetGalley and Repeater Books for the ARC of this book.
November 13, 2024
V enjoyable page-turning activist bildungsroman with a surrealist undercurrent; highly astute on the sometimes heroic and sometimes exceptionally annoying psychology of the young male revolutionary, and a fascinating portrait of a place, and of being both in and out of it.
March 24, 2025
Taipei at Daybreak follows a young Taiwanese American as he travels between the U.S., Tokyo, and Taiwan, participating in protest movements as he tries to find his place and purpose in the world. This novel intrigued me for a lot of reasons. I appreciated the focus on friendships--and often the dissolution of those friendships--rather than making romantic relationships the center of the book or the protagonist's life. I also appreciated the narrator's direct gaze that he levels on those around him but also on himself, questioning....well, everything. Having no experience in protest movements or occupations, I found the author Brian Hioe's descriptions of them fascinating -- their rhythms, their enviable energy, and perhaps most of all the hours after the occupation or protest has ended and the characters are wondering "what now?" There is also some fascinating thinking about performance, protest movements, and art ("I came to wonder if protests weren't simply their own kind of performance too, or maybe it was that all art was a kind of protest against reality.") It's a thoughtful novel that acknowledges and engages with the messiness of protest while ending with some lingering mystery and a nod toward the impossibility of resolution, at least for the narrator.
April 29, 2025
REVIEW TO COME
Notable Quotes
"It all came to be remembered as a hopeful thing, and yet what's often forgotten was how apocalyptic it all seemed at the time. Why else would that many people have taken to the streets if not for the sense of doom that hung over their heads? Nothing is poetry until it's over, until it is safely dead and past. In the moment, it's just messy incommensurable reality, exceeding any capacity to capture it in language. Then, later, accessing it in memory, it all becomes aestheticized, sanitized. We remember a particular version of the past - even of who we were - rather than what truly was."
"Tawianese Americans by and large didn't understand me either. Matters of identity were often as ingrained emotional reaction fo rthem, even when this just disguised how shallow their understanind of Taiwan was - or that their idea of Taiwan was just something they themselves had imagined into being. Taiwanese Americans or other Asian Americans often clung to an imagined version of their roots in order to deal with their sense of not belonging to white American society. A coping mechanism. I couldn't abide by that."
Notable Quotes
"It all came to be remembered as a hopeful thing, and yet what's often forgotten was how apocalyptic it all seemed at the time. Why else would that many people have taken to the streets if not for the sense of doom that hung over their heads? Nothing is poetry until it's over, until it is safely dead and past. In the moment, it's just messy incommensurable reality, exceeding any capacity to capture it in language. Then, later, accessing it in memory, it all becomes aestheticized, sanitized. We remember a particular version of the past - even of who we were - rather than what truly was."
"Tawianese Americans by and large didn't understand me either. Matters of identity were often as ingrained emotional reaction fo rthem, even when this just disguised how shallow their understanind of Taiwan was - or that their idea of Taiwan was just something they themselves had imagined into being. Taiwanese Americans or other Asian Americans often clung to an imagined version of their roots in order to deal with their sense of not belonging to white American society. A coping mechanism. I couldn't abide by that."
February 22, 2025
Marxist, nihilistic autofiction bares Taiwan’s complexities
—
In a Marxist, nihilistic autofiction, Hioe lays bare the complexities of Taiwan, its politics and Taiwanese identities. Perhaps a thinly veiled version of the author, the narrator is a slippery voyeur at some of the scenes of Taiwan’s recent political turmoil. The unreliable narrator, variously named as QQ or Ah-Qui, talks to the reader and to an unseen character V, recounting a short period in his early to mid-twenties, activist at whatever presents itself: Occupy Wall Street, anti-nuclear, KMT autocracy. Throughout this, at the heart of the character is an emptiness, a centre without any structure, that threatens to sabotage whatever he turns his hand to.
Written in an intimate but distanced style, the book is dense with information, and like its narrator, never slips into any easy answers. Not quite on the fence on the politics being circled, but never quite capitulating to the status quo, this is a book to test your mettle as a reader and thinker.
Four stars.
—
In a Marxist, nihilistic autofiction, Hioe lays bare the complexities of Taiwan, its politics and Taiwanese identities. Perhaps a thinly veiled version of the author, the narrator is a slippery voyeur at some of the scenes of Taiwan’s recent political turmoil. The unreliable narrator, variously named as QQ or Ah-Qui, talks to the reader and to an unseen character V, recounting a short period in his early to mid-twenties, activist at whatever presents itself: Occupy Wall Street, anti-nuclear, KMT autocracy. Throughout this, at the heart of the character is an emptiness, a centre without any structure, that threatens to sabotage whatever he turns his hand to.
Written in an intimate but distanced style, the book is dense with information, and like its narrator, never slips into any easy answers. Not quite on the fence on the politics being circled, but never quite capitulating to the status quo, this is a book to test your mettle as a reader and thinker.
Four stars.
October 15, 2025
3.5 stars. I didn't notice it was not non-fiction until like 10% in, which was funny. People can be so different from you even if they have similar politics. Or maybe not so different.
August 31, 2025
During my research on more recent events (from the Sunflower Movement in 2014 to the present) in Taiwan, I have encountered valuable articles on line by the author. He founded a magazine, New Bloom, in honor of how Taiwan named its various social movements, e.g. Wild Lily (1990), Wild Strawberry (2008), and Sunflower (2014). The magazine offers “radical perspectives on Taiwan and the Asia Pacific.” (https://newbloommag.net/) New Bloom and the author spun off the Daybreak project, to create an “interactive encyclopedia and oral history archive of the 2014 Sunflower Movement. (https://daybreak.newbloommag.net/)
Thus when I discovered his book on Amazon, I bought it. Given his profile in the journalistic world, he got blurbs from many authors I have read, including Shawna Yang Ryan, author of Green Island; Clarissa Wei, author of Made in Taiwan: Recipes and Stories from the Island Nation; Lev Nachman, co-author of Taiwan: A Contested Democracy Under Threat; Wendy Chang, author of Island X: Taiwanese Student Migrants, Campus Spies, and Cold War Activism; to name a few.
From Shawn Yang Ryan: “Brian Hioe’s Taipei at Daybreak is a brilliant and disturbing depiction of an alienated young Taiwanese American activist as he roams from New York to Japan to Taiwan. Stylistically in the tradition of Camus and Dostoyevsky, this novel makes its own mark by setting the story against the backdrop of a pivotal moment in contemporary Taiwanese history. Hioe is an intelligent and gifted new fictional voice and Taipe at Daybreak is a critical contribution to multiple literary lineages.”
The pivotal moment captured in the book is the Sunflower Movement, where university students occupied the Legislative Yuan to protest the KMT approach to draw closer to the PRC in service agreements. The fear was this would allow the PRC to control Taiwan through finance constraints.
Another moment, a year later, was a protest and occupation of the Ministry of Education to modify the curriculum, trying to depict falsely Taiwan as having been always parts of China. “Any history that suggested Taiwan was not part of China, the KMT tried to bury.” P 146. The protest escalated when a fellow student killed himself after being reprimanded (and perhaps threatened).
The great strength of the book is that the protagonist, a Taiwanese American activist, gives a first person view of events in Taipei. This is extremely valuable for those of us who were not there. It gave an account of the ebb and flow of feelings and energy, the messiness of the multiple confrontations, and of the challenge of coordinating a spontaneous outburst of rejection of the KMT’s position and the fear of not acting (in the Sunflower movement).
As the blurb above mentions, the protagonist is disturbed. He has participated in protests in the US, Japan and finally Taiwan. He has challenges with building long-term relationships, controlling anger. The first pages, in fact most of the book, are filled with anger. We come to understand some of the sources: he is trying to accept his grandfather’s actions during white terror, overseeing executions as a member of the Garrison Command, and later, in the US, shrugging it off as a different period with different needs.
While the chapters are short, making it easy to move forward, I will admit to not appreciating the negativity that radiated from the protagonist. While it could be authentic, it turned me off. Furthermore, the narrator continues talking to “V”. Perhaps this is his name for the inner demon, who finally leaves. But perhaps it is a sign he has matured?
Also, when reading, I also kept wondering: how autobiographical is this “novel?” The Daybreak in the novel is the online news magazine, likely based on New Bloom. He has interviewed many people from the Sunflower movement, so those scenes are real for me.
FB. A coming-of-age novel rich in detail about a pivotal event in Taiwan’s history. The narrator is battling with inner demons that spill into the novel as anger, spite, trouble with friends. I enjoyed the scenes of the events, not so much his inner turmoil.
Thus when I discovered his book on Amazon, I bought it. Given his profile in the journalistic world, he got blurbs from many authors I have read, including Shawna Yang Ryan, author of Green Island; Clarissa Wei, author of Made in Taiwan: Recipes and Stories from the Island Nation; Lev Nachman, co-author of Taiwan: A Contested Democracy Under Threat; Wendy Chang, author of Island X: Taiwanese Student Migrants, Campus Spies, and Cold War Activism; to name a few.
From Shawn Yang Ryan: “Brian Hioe’s Taipei at Daybreak is a brilliant and disturbing depiction of an alienated young Taiwanese American activist as he roams from New York to Japan to Taiwan. Stylistically in the tradition of Camus and Dostoyevsky, this novel makes its own mark by setting the story against the backdrop of a pivotal moment in contemporary Taiwanese history. Hioe is an intelligent and gifted new fictional voice and Taipe at Daybreak is a critical contribution to multiple literary lineages.”
The pivotal moment captured in the book is the Sunflower Movement, where university students occupied the Legislative Yuan to protest the KMT approach to draw closer to the PRC in service agreements. The fear was this would allow the PRC to control Taiwan through finance constraints.
Another moment, a year later, was a protest and occupation of the Ministry of Education to modify the curriculum, trying to depict falsely Taiwan as having been always parts of China. “Any history that suggested Taiwan was not part of China, the KMT tried to bury.” P 146. The protest escalated when a fellow student killed himself after being reprimanded (and perhaps threatened).
The great strength of the book is that the protagonist, a Taiwanese American activist, gives a first person view of events in Taipei. This is extremely valuable for those of us who were not there. It gave an account of the ebb and flow of feelings and energy, the messiness of the multiple confrontations, and of the challenge of coordinating a spontaneous outburst of rejection of the KMT’s position and the fear of not acting (in the Sunflower movement).
As the blurb above mentions, the protagonist is disturbed. He has participated in protests in the US, Japan and finally Taiwan. He has challenges with building long-term relationships, controlling anger. The first pages, in fact most of the book, are filled with anger. We come to understand some of the sources: he is trying to accept his grandfather’s actions during white terror, overseeing executions as a member of the Garrison Command, and later, in the US, shrugging it off as a different period with different needs.
While the chapters are short, making it easy to move forward, I will admit to not appreciating the negativity that radiated from the protagonist. While it could be authentic, it turned me off. Furthermore, the narrator continues talking to “V”. Perhaps this is his name for the inner demon, who finally leaves. But perhaps it is a sign he has matured?
Also, when reading, I also kept wondering: how autobiographical is this “novel?” The Daybreak in the novel is the online news magazine, likely based on New Bloom. He has interviewed many people from the Sunflower movement, so those scenes are real for me.
FB. A coming-of-age novel rich in detail about a pivotal event in Taiwan’s history. The narrator is battling with inner demons that spill into the novel as anger, spite, trouble with friends. I enjoyed the scenes of the events, not so much his inner turmoil.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews