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X島嶼：留學生、監控與冷戰時代的隱形戰場，海另一端的台灣民主運動
台灣知識分子，如何在海的另一端找到屬於自己的認同。
這本書，是台灣歷史欠缺的一片關鍵拼圖。
我們對台灣的意識與定義，甚至全民該守護的價值，
也許，正是這些留學生，在海的另一端締造的。
台灣民主的海外支線：一段被忽略的歷史
《Ｘ島嶼》是台灣第一本講述台美人經歷的書。本書系統性爬梳1960至1980年代，台灣留學生於美國參與社會運動、逐步建立台灣意識的過程。這條自美國校園延伸出的自我探詢之路，構成了台灣民主進程中一條重要卻長期被忽略的支線。
美國的沉默與校園裡的監控
冷戰時期，國民黨政府滲透、監控美國各大學，設置黑名單，許多學生曾受騷擾，甚至有人死因成謎。美國政府的沉默與縱容，是鄭昕筆下林孝信、黃啟明、陳玉璽與陳文成等人遭遇的背後推力。她經由深度訪談與檔案研究，揭露這段在自由民主國度的壓迫史，也描繪留學生們如何在高壓環境下建立緊密的社交網絡、組織運動，抵抗來自故鄉的極權掌控。他們雖來自台灣，卻在離家鄉一整片海洋的異地上，逐步覺醒對自身文化與土地的認同。
始於台灣，終於台灣
鄭昕以成長經歷為引，細膩描寫她所認識的一代台美人──那些被迫離開家園、在異鄉生根的政治理想家。他們的抗爭不僅止於反對國民黨
這本書，是台灣歷史欠缺的一片關鍵拼圖。
我們對台灣的意識與定義，甚至全民該守護的價值，
也許，正是這些留學生，在海的另一端締造的。
台灣民主的海外支線：一段被忽略的歷史
《Ｘ島嶼》是台灣第一本講述台美人經歷的書。本書系統性爬梳1960至1980年代，台灣留學生於美國參與社會運動、逐步建立台灣意識的過程。這條自美國校園延伸出的自我探詢之路，構成了台灣民主進程中一條重要卻長期被忽略的支線。
美國的沉默與校園裡的監控
冷戰時期，國民黨政府滲透、監控美國各大學，設置黑名單，許多學生曾受騷擾，甚至有人死因成謎。美國政府的沉默與縱容，是鄭昕筆下林孝信、黃啟明、陳玉璽與陳文成等人遭遇的背後推力。她經由深度訪談與檔案研究，揭露這段在自由民主國度的壓迫史，也描繪留學生們如何在高壓環境下建立緊密的社交網絡、組織運動，抵抗來自故鄉的極權掌控。他們雖來自台灣，卻在離家鄉一整片海洋的異地上，逐步覺醒對自身文化與土地的認同。
始於台灣，終於台灣
鄭昕以成長經歷為引，細膩描寫她所認識的一代台美人──那些被迫離開家園、在異鄉生根的政治理想家。他們的抗爭不僅止於反對國民黨
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Published August 28, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 27, 2023
I truly believe that Wendy Cheng’s Island X is essential reading for Taiwanese Americans. It is an unprecedented origin story of Taiwanese Americans, lyrically charting not only where we come from but, crucially, why it matters.
While comprehensively researched and published as scholarly text, Island X is compulsively readable, and some sections even feel like “uncle/auntie lore,” untangling and grounding the mysterious elders of our community in vital context that even they are not fully able to articulate or perceive.
Island X also offers timely analysis of some baffling contradictions within our community: our intuitive solidarity with the repressed, who do not elect their harmful leaders; our strange romanticization of and continued reliance on the United States government (who not only funded the 228 massacre under the Kuomintang government but allowed them to spy on and intimidate Taiwanese students on American college campuses); our few progressive allies and advocates despite becoming a progressive nation. Perhaps the biggest takeaway here is that once the constraints that prevented our grandparents and parents from developing a sustained critique of the United States are illuminated — we their children can build upon their work, stand upon their shoulders, and continue to reach for a political articulation that leaves no one behind. If “Taiwanese American identity should be understood as merging from a specific dialectical and semi-colonial relationship between Taiwan and the United States,” may we as Taiwanese Americans dedicate our politics to accountability for both.
Full review here: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/202...
While comprehensively researched and published as scholarly text, Island X is compulsively readable, and some sections even feel like “uncle/auntie lore,” untangling and grounding the mysterious elders of our community in vital context that even they are not fully able to articulate or perceive.
Island X also offers timely analysis of some baffling contradictions within our community: our intuitive solidarity with the repressed, who do not elect their harmful leaders; our strange romanticization of and continued reliance on the United States government (who not only funded the 228 massacre under the Kuomintang government but allowed them to spy on and intimidate Taiwanese students on American college campuses); our few progressive allies and advocates despite becoming a progressive nation. Perhaps the biggest takeaway here is that once the constraints that prevented our grandparents and parents from developing a sustained critique of the United States are illuminated — we their children can build upon their work, stand upon their shoulders, and continue to reach for a political articulation that leaves no one behind. If “Taiwanese American identity should be understood as merging from a specific dialectical and semi-colonial relationship between Taiwan and the United States,” may we as Taiwanese Americans dedicate our politics to accountability for both.
Full review here: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/202...
January 7, 2024
The author makes a compelling case for studying and understanding the role of Taiwanese students in the United States and their influence on the evolution of the Taiwan (Republic of China) government and the development of a vibrant Taiwanese American community in the United States.
According to the author, this book “is the first book dedicated to the political lives of Taiwanese migrants who came to the United States as students during the late Cold War (1960s through 1980s). It fills a significant lacuna in Asian American historiography and offers an in-depth social and political analysis of a group and set of experiences shaped by the global Cold War in ways that have often been erased, overlooked, or misunderstood. Typically regarded as an apolitical model-minority group, many Taiwanese of this generation were in fact overwhelming political, shaped by multiple imperial and colonial identities and influenced by the global social movements of their generation.” (page 2)
The uses the framework of an infrastructure of activism (and networks of students) and an infrastructure of surveillance (of the “professional student” KMT spies on campus, and the blind eye of Universities and the US government towards the spies and the chilling effect on the Taiwanese students). “…from 1964 to 1991 (peaking from 1976 to 1981), incidents of spying were reported on twenty-one US campuses. A report on someone could lead to intimidation, threats of injury or death, harassment of family in Taiwan, or being blacklisted from returning to Taiwan.” Many cases resulted in arrest and imprisonment. (page 151)
The author conducted more than thirty-five interviews over a decade, which is the foundation of her work. In addition, the author provides many notes and references for others to pursue future research.
To me, the most interesting chapters involved her three in-depth ones on individuals:
• Huang Chii-ming, a student at the University of Wisconsin, who assisted Douglas Mendel in his research the resulting in The Politics of Formosan Nationalism, which documented the developing ideology of Formosan nationalism (from 1957 to 1964) (page 81). Huang was arrested upon returning to Taiwan and detained under a Section of the Martial Law … “‘on the grounds of having participated in alleged subversive organization. Though eventually released, he was not allowed to leave Taiwan.
the Formosan Affairs Study Group.” (page 97)
• Chen Yi-hsi was a student at the University of Hawai’i and at the UH’s East-West Center (EWC). When he returned to Taiwan, he stopped in Japan, where he was “detained overnight, and forcibly deported to Taiwan the next morning, where he was immediately arrested and jailed by the Taiwan Garrison Command with no notification to anyone.” (pages 103-104). His alleged crimes were reading communist literature and the works of Mao-Tse-tung in the EWC library, and penning two pro-Chinese communist articles under a pseudonym for a leftist newspaper in Tokyo, “allegations that rested on one-sided evidence provided by the ROC.” (page103) The author uses this case to discuss spies, and the complacency of US institutions, of not acknowledging the spies on campus nor protecting international students from the home country. The author also provides background on the EWC in the context of the Cold War. Also, the author described the efforts to first free Chen Yi-hsi, then to get the ROC government to allow him to return (a process that spanned over six years. She (the author) also states that the efforts to free Chen in Hawai’i “spanned a formative period in the political history of Hawai’i, in which students and young people were at the center of activism that was part of a burgeoning global consciousness about imperialism, militarism, and capitalism, taking part in Hawai’i’s first decades of US statehood…. Chen’s case showed…. How Taiwanese students of his generation were active participants in global history and politics, despite the fact that their voices were regularly curtailed by what the University of Hawai’i aptly described as ‘the freedom of silence.’” (page 147)
• Chen Wen-chen was a brilliant junior faculty at Carnegie Mellon, when he died in 1981. He had returned to Taiwan with his wife and one-year-old son to share with his family. Upon seeking an exit visa, he spent twelve hours in the Garrison Command offices, and was later found dead near the National Taiwan University (NTU) library. The Garrison Command said it was suicide. Colleagues and family did not believe them. To this day, the truth has not been made public. Chen was involved in independence movements in the US, and was visible. That author takes this case to discuss the various factions within the independence movements. His case launched a series of US Congressional hearings on spies in the US, adding to the pressure on the ROC government to reform (though it was six more years before the lifting of martial law, and several more before the Garrison Command was disbanded. Today, there is a memorial on the NTU campus to his memory.
The author goes into more detail in her book that I do above about the relationships between the cases and the larger geopolitics at play.
FB. An extremely valuable contribution to understand the role of a generation of Taiwanese American students, in their struggle to live in the US where there were freedoms not available to them in Taiwan and being held to ROC rules when they returned. The author relates larger issues of global cold war on the complacency of US institutions to their plight, and how these students contributed both to the emergence of democracy in Taiwan and the foundations of a vibrant Taiwanese American community in the US. Through extensive interviews, she has captured the experiences of this overlooked generation and its struggles.
According to the author, this book “is the first book dedicated to the political lives of Taiwanese migrants who came to the United States as students during the late Cold War (1960s through 1980s). It fills a significant lacuna in Asian American historiography and offers an in-depth social and political analysis of a group and set of experiences shaped by the global Cold War in ways that have often been erased, overlooked, or misunderstood. Typically regarded as an apolitical model-minority group, many Taiwanese of this generation were in fact overwhelming political, shaped by multiple imperial and colonial identities and influenced by the global social movements of their generation.” (page 2)
The uses the framework of an infrastructure of activism (and networks of students) and an infrastructure of surveillance (of the “professional student” KMT spies on campus, and the blind eye of Universities and the US government towards the spies and the chilling effect on the Taiwanese students). “…from 1964 to 1991 (peaking from 1976 to 1981), incidents of spying were reported on twenty-one US campuses. A report on someone could lead to intimidation, threats of injury or death, harassment of family in Taiwan, or being blacklisted from returning to Taiwan.” Many cases resulted in arrest and imprisonment. (page 151)
The author conducted more than thirty-five interviews over a decade, which is the foundation of her work. In addition, the author provides many notes and references for others to pursue future research.
To me, the most interesting chapters involved her three in-depth ones on individuals:
• Huang Chii-ming, a student at the University of Wisconsin, who assisted Douglas Mendel in his research the resulting in The Politics of Formosan Nationalism, which documented the developing ideology of Formosan nationalism (from 1957 to 1964) (page 81). Huang was arrested upon returning to Taiwan and detained under a Section of the Martial Law … “‘on the grounds of having participated in alleged subversive organization. Though eventually released, he was not allowed to leave Taiwan.
the Formosan Affairs Study Group.” (page 97)
• Chen Yi-hsi was a student at the University of Hawai’i and at the UH’s East-West Center (EWC). When he returned to Taiwan, he stopped in Japan, where he was “detained overnight, and forcibly deported to Taiwan the next morning, where he was immediately arrested and jailed by the Taiwan Garrison Command with no notification to anyone.” (pages 103-104). His alleged crimes were reading communist literature and the works of Mao-Tse-tung in the EWC library, and penning two pro-Chinese communist articles under a pseudonym for a leftist newspaper in Tokyo, “allegations that rested on one-sided evidence provided by the ROC.” (page103) The author uses this case to discuss spies, and the complacency of US institutions, of not acknowledging the spies on campus nor protecting international students from the home country. The author also provides background on the EWC in the context of the Cold War. Also, the author described the efforts to first free Chen Yi-hsi, then to get the ROC government to allow him to return (a process that spanned over six years. She (the author) also states that the efforts to free Chen in Hawai’i “spanned a formative period in the political history of Hawai’i, in which students and young people were at the center of activism that was part of a burgeoning global consciousness about imperialism, militarism, and capitalism, taking part in Hawai’i’s first decades of US statehood…. Chen’s case showed…. How Taiwanese students of his generation were active participants in global history and politics, despite the fact that their voices were regularly curtailed by what the University of Hawai’i aptly described as ‘the freedom of silence.’” (page 147)
• Chen Wen-chen was a brilliant junior faculty at Carnegie Mellon, when he died in 1981. He had returned to Taiwan with his wife and one-year-old son to share with his family. Upon seeking an exit visa, he spent twelve hours in the Garrison Command offices, and was later found dead near the National Taiwan University (NTU) library. The Garrison Command said it was suicide. Colleagues and family did not believe them. To this day, the truth has not been made public. Chen was involved in independence movements in the US, and was visible. That author takes this case to discuss the various factions within the independence movements. His case launched a series of US Congressional hearings on spies in the US, adding to the pressure on the ROC government to reform (though it was six more years before the lifting of martial law, and several more before the Garrison Command was disbanded. Today, there is a memorial on the NTU campus to his memory.
The author goes into more detail in her book that I do above about the relationships between the cases and the larger geopolitics at play.
FB. An extremely valuable contribution to understand the role of a generation of Taiwanese American students, in their struggle to live in the US where there were freedoms not available to them in Taiwan and being held to ROC rules when they returned. The author relates larger issues of global cold war on the complacency of US institutions to their plight, and how these students contributed both to the emergence of democracy in Taiwan and the foundations of a vibrant Taiwanese American community in the US. Through extensive interviews, she has captured the experiences of this overlooked generation and its struggles.
June 19, 2024
Really thoroughly appreciate this book on so many levels. On a base level, it writes to a history that I'd only understood or learned about through my parents, but really further illuminated/expanded that history and taught me even more. It confirmed everything they had taught me when I was younger, but expanded it and situated it with an intelligent modern analysis as well. At its core, that is what I loved so much about this book.
But really, there was so much that I really loved about this book. As far as I know, it is one of the only history books that really details the KMT's evils beyond just Taiwan. But it does not limit itself to taking on the KMT, it correctly identifies the US's complicity, hypocrisy, and role in allowing this to occur. In the same spirit, it allows the stories of Taiwanese migrants to live beyond the binaries that are so often associated with Taiwan. Of course their politics were always more than "China + Communism = Bad." And of course there were multiple groups trying to unravel how to fight for democracy and freedom in varying ways. This book gives Taiwanese American migrants from my parents generation and after that history to breathe and have depth. Crucially, it also allows Taiwanese Americans room to grow and sort their modern political identity beyond their current binary political associations.
Wendy Cheng really did a wonderful job here, and this will likely forever be a reference book for me and one I share avidly. In terms of the chapters/stories, the first two chapters and the last were my favorite, but really the entire book was great, as I keep saying over and over.
But really, there was so much that I really loved about this book. As far as I know, it is one of the only history books that really details the KMT's evils beyond just Taiwan. But it does not limit itself to taking on the KMT, it correctly identifies the US's complicity, hypocrisy, and role in allowing this to occur. In the same spirit, it allows the stories of Taiwanese migrants to live beyond the binaries that are so often associated with Taiwan. Of course their politics were always more than "China + Communism = Bad." And of course there were multiple groups trying to unravel how to fight for democracy and freedom in varying ways. This book gives Taiwanese American migrants from my parents generation and after that history to breathe and have depth. Crucially, it also allows Taiwanese Americans room to grow and sort their modern political identity beyond their current binary political associations.
Wendy Cheng really did a wonderful job here, and this will likely forever be a reference book for me and one I share avidly. In terms of the chapters/stories, the first two chapters and the last were my favorite, but really the entire book was great, as I keep saying over and over.
October 12, 2024
Positives: This book and Cheng's direct interviews of figures in Taiwanese American history plays an important role in preserving the history of critical moments. For example, the carefully researched section about Chen Yu-hsi and the Cold War contextualism and the connections across states and countries is critical documentation. Cheng does a great job of painting a clear picture of KMT on-campus spying and explaining the complicity of the U.S. government. For me, she helped contextualize the involvement of people like Jim Leach and things that I had grown up hearing as being important, but without the full background.
Negatives: While being very well researched, as a book it is written in academic political language which makes it a bit dry. Also, because it goes really deep into a handful of areas, it felt more like a collection of (long) essays rather than a cohesive book. I didn't get a sense of narrative or arc or overall thesis, especially as related to the book's title.
Since there is so little written on this topic, it's worth reading if you are interested in the experience of some Taiwanese immigrants or about the U.S. Cold War impact on Taiwanese.
November 26, 2024
Much like Formosa Betrayed, this book sheds light on not just the complexities of Taiwan during the martial law period but also the US, the country whose contradictions in beliefs and actions are so key to Taiwan's survival. Also a stark delineation of how the actions of the KMT, like those of all tyrants, lead to their own downfall. Sometimes overly academic (I had a lot of trouble continuing to read it because of all the jargon terms like hegemonic and praxis), but deeply relevant and truthful.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews