碩士論文
Department of English, College of Liberal Arts National Taiwan Normal University
Master’s Thesis
批判式記憶白色恐怖:
《綠島》與《返校》對於正義與創傷的再政治化 A Critical Remembering of the White Terror:
Re-politicizing Justice and Trauma in Green Island and Detention
吳崇宇 Chung-yu Wu
指導教授: 李秀娟 博士 Advisor: Hsiu-chuan Lee, Ph.D.
中華民國 110 年 1 月 January 2021
Acknowledgements
Throughout the process of writing this thesis, I have gained a huge amount of support, assistance, and encouragement. Here I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to those who have accompanied me along this long journey.
First and foremost, my deepest appreciation goes to my advisor, Professor Hsiu- chuan Lee, for her guidance through the painstaking writing process. Professor Lee gave me much time and space to conceive the thesis project. She patiently guided me to clarify my thoughts, keenly pointed out my blind spots in writing, and offered constructive insights. Without her, I would not have been able to overcome many difficulties. It is my great honor to have Professor Lee as my advisor and mentor.
I would also like to express my sincere appreciation to Professor Pi-hua Ni and Professor Yuh-chuan Shao for taking their time to read my work and participate in my thesis oral defense. Their pertinent comments and insightful feedbacks helped me improve this thesis. When I was an undergraduate, Professor Ni guided me to read Green Island and ignited my passion for literature. In my graduate years, Professor Shao’s warm encouragement pushed me to complete my degree. Both professors had a profound influence on me. I am deeply indebted to them.
Besides my mentors, my friends sugared the bitter lonely process of thesis writing. I owe my friends a great debt of thanks for their company and chit-chat.
Special thanks go to Bai-yi, Fang-yu, Hong-li, Kita, Szu-yen, Wei-yan, White, Yu- ting, and Zhu-yu.
Last but not least, I would like to thank my family: my father, mother, elder sister, and younger brother, who have always been supportive and nurtured me with selfless and endless love. I am beyond fortunate to have their love, trust, and
confidence, which backed me up and made the completion of this thesis possible.
This thesis is dedicated to my beloved family.
摘要
本論文藉由分析《綠島》及《返校》，探討作家楊小娜(Shawna Yang Ryan)
與導演徐漢強(Han-chiang Hsu)如何透過小說及電影，提供讀者觀眾另類的途徑 去面對創傷及建構正義的概念，並進而促成對於白色恐怖的批判式記憶。第一 章首先爬梳現存對於二二八事件、白色恐怖及轉型正義的研究。而後，我援引 米山麗莎(Lisa Yoneyama)提出的「九零後跨國補償文化」(post-1990s transborder redress culture)及「正義的再政治化」(re-politicization of justice)等理論架構。我 主張將臺灣的二二八事件及白色恐怖置於米山麗莎的理論框架中重新檢視。第 二章及第三章以前述理論概念對《綠島》與《返校》分別進行文本分析，探討 兩個文本如何建構出另類的跳脫加害者/受害者二元對立結構的正義概念。此 外，我援用拉卡柏(Dominick LaCapra)兩種面對創傷的策略: 行動化(acting out) 及透工(working through)，分析《綠島》與《返校》中角色的創傷經驗。我主 張，兩個文本藉由呈現角色透工(working through)創傷的過程，向讀者觀眾強調 了歷史創傷的未來指向。第四章為結論，反思現今臺灣關於轉型正義執行及民 主發展的議題，希冀藉此促使讀者(尤其是年輕世代)重新檢視自身與歷史創傷 的關聯，並思考當代臺灣社會的正義及民主意涵。
關鍵詞:《綠島》，《返校》，米山麗莎，拉卡柏，再政治化，正義，創傷
Abstract
This thesis studies Shawna Yang Ryan’s Green Island and Han-chiang Hsu’s Detention, with a focus on how they open up alternative ways to confront trauma, conceive justice and foster a critical remembering of the White Terror. Chapter One reviews the existing scholarship on the 228 Incident, White Terror, and transitional justice. Then, I draw on Lisa Yoneyama’s theoretical texts which investigate the post- 1990s transborder redress culture and suggest a re-politicization of justice. I propose to put the 228 Incident and White Terror within Yoneyama’s framework. Chapter Two and Chapter Three proceed to investigate respectively how Green Island and
Detention reconceptualize the idea of justice beyond the victim/perpetrator binary opposition. Besides, I borrow the concepts of “acting out” and “working through”
from Dominick LaCapra to examine the characters’ traumatic experiences in these two primary texts. By presenting the characters’ process of working through the trauma, I argue that Green Island and Detention foreground the future-orientation of historical traumas. In Chapter Four, I conclude this thesis via a reflection on recent issues happening in Taiwan related to the administration of transitional justice and the development of Taiwan’s democracy. I intend to propel readers—especially the young generations— to reexamine their connection with historical traumas and to reconsider the meaning of justice and democracy in the present Taiwan.
Keywords: Green Island, Detention, Lisa Yoneyama, Dominick LaCapra, re- politicization, justice, trauma
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements.………...………i
摘要……….………...…...…iii
Abstract…………..………..iv
Table of Contents……….……….…v
Chapter One: Introduction………. 1
I. Background and Motivation………...1
II. Thesis Project, Literature Review and Methodology………3
III. Outline of Chapters………11
Chapter Two: Green Island………..………..14
I. The U.S.-Chinese Nationalist Alliance/Complicity………..…………23
II. Writing to Work through the Trauma………..…….29
Chapter Three: Detention………..………35
I. Symbolic Representations of the State Apparatus……….………...39
II. Fang as a Victim-victimizer……….………44
III. Working through Historical Traumas………...46
Chapter Four: Rethinking Transitional Justice and Democracy in Taiwan…….49
Works Cited………54
Appendix: A Conversation with Lieh Chen (陳列)……….60
Chapter One: Introduction
I. Background and Motivation
When I was a high school student, I learned February 28th Incident1 and White Terror2 in the history class. I did not feel much towards the two historical terms at that time. I understood that there were persecutions and abuses on social elites, political dissidents and civilians committed by the police and military of the Nationalist regime from 1947 to 1992, yet the malefactions were conducted a long time ago. To those who were born in Taiwan after 1992, like me, we have never lived under the enforcement of Martial Law. In addition, we tend to take the freedom of speech and democracy for granted. The 228 Incident and White Terror were abstract and distant historical knowledge to us. Not until I participated in the experience camp for human rights did I realize February 28th was not only a national holiday and White Terror was not just a historical time period on textbooks.
The National Human Rights Museum has held experience camp for students once a year since 2012. In May 2019, I was fortunately chosen as one of the
participants. In the camp, docents, students, and a few victims of the White Terror and their descendants paid a visit to the Green Island White Terror Memorial Park. We
1 The 228 Incident occurred in 1947, the second year of the Chinese Nationalist government’s takeover of Taiwan after World War II. This uprising resulted from the public’s cumulative feelings of
frustration and indignation from unemployment, inflation, and the misadministration of the Nationalist government. The confiscation of contraband cigarettes is considered the last straw.
2 The Chinese Nationalist Party was defeated by the communists and moved the central government to Taiwan in 1949. In order to consolidate its rule, the government promulgated the Temporary
Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist Rebellion (動員戡亂時期臨時條款) in 1948, then Martial Law in 1949. In addition, Statutes for the Detection and Eradication of Spies During the Period of Communist Rebellion (戡亂時期檢肅匪諜 條例) and Statutes for the Punishment of Rebellion (懲治叛亂條例) were enacted in succession.
Those who violated the ordinances were arrested, interrogated, imprisoned, and even executed without legitimate trials. This period of autocratic governance is known as the White Terror Period.
Not until the Criminal Code Article 100 Amendment (刑法一百條修正案) passed and promulgated did the White Terror Period officially end.
visited historical remains, including New Life Correction Center, Oasis Villa,3 and the Graveyard for the 13th Squadron.4 We also stayed in the cell for an hour, without any conversation, in order to experience the damp muggy weather and the sense of boredom and desperation, which were part of the political prisoners’ life on Green Island during the White Terror period. In other classes of the camp, the organizers invited aged survivors of the White Terror, Tsai Kun-lin (蔡焜霖)5 and Chen Chin- sheng (陳欽生),6 to share experiences of being persecuted and open
transgenerational dialogues. The stories they shared plucked the audiences’
heartstrings, inducing reflection on human rights and democracy.
Touched and inspired by aged survivors’ perseverance and enthusiasm, I also wanted to contribute to human rights education. As a result, in July 2020, I signed up for the experience camp again and revisited Green Island. I became a camp counselor and co-organizer, obtaining the chance to participate in the preliminary meetings and curriculum planning. Besides, I was assigned to interview the writer Lieh Chen (陳 列)7 about his experience as a political prisoner and artist-in-residence at the
3 New Life Correction Center (臺灣省保安司令部新生訓導處) and Oasis Villa (綠洲山莊) were established to confine political prisoners. After Martial Law was repealed, the two historical remains became Green Island Prison under the management of the Ministry of Justice.
4 During the White Terror period, political prisoners in Green Island were assigned to twelve squadrons. The Graveyard for the 13th Squadron (第十三中隊公墓) was a cemetery for those who died of illness or from suicide in the prison and whose bodies were not collected by their family.
5 Tsai Kun-lin was born in 1930. In 1950, Tsai was arrested and accused of participating in a reading club, which was considered illegal by the authority at then. In 1951, Tsai became one of the first batch of political prisoners shipped to Green Island and was imprisoned for a decade.
6 Chen Chin-sheng is a Malaysian-Taiwanese born in 1949. In 1971, when Chen was a student of Cheng Kung University, he was arrested and falsely accused of taking part in the USIS Tainan bombing (臺南美國新聞處爆炸案). Chen was initially sentenced to death but afterwards the sentence was commuted to imprisonment for twelve years because of the rescue from the government of Malaysia and his family.
7 Chen Lieh was born in 1946. In 1972, he was arrested and accused of spreading communist
propaganda. He was sentenced to imprisonment for seven years (in fact four years and eight months because of the commutation). After Chen was released, he composed several well-known literary works regarding his life experiences, such as The Years on the Ground《地上歲月》(1989), The Eternal Mountains《永遠的山》(1991), and The Song of Hesitation《躊躇之歌》(2013).
National Human Rights Museum.8 Indeed, through the process of visiting the historical remains and listening to the survivors’ life stories, I felt like a time traveler going back to the past to witness historical tragedies. I was no longer a bystander to history. The historical term “White Terror” came alive for me.
After I partook in the camp, several questions popped into my mind. I
contemplate in what ways the young generation, who did not personally experience the White Terror, could relate themselves to the historical past. Why is it significant for the young generation to learn and understand the historical events? What could the events mean to those who were born after the lifting of Martial Law? In addition, I ponder on why our society has not yet been completely freed from the sense of trauma and released from the haunting horror of White Terror. After Martial Law was
abolished, the official apologies were made by the government, and the national human rights museums and memorial parks were established, the 228 Incident and White Terror somehow remains an undissolved issue of public concern and political invocation. How come the victims’ wounds in a way remain unhealed and the ghosts of the 228 Incident and White Terror still haunt our society? Does it mean that we have not done enough to appease the historical trauma?
II. Thesis Project, Literature Review and Methodology
In this thesis project, I intend to examine the 228 Incident and White Terror by borrowing the framework of the “post-1990s transborder redress culture” (viii) put forth by Lisa Yoneyama in Cold War Ruins (2016). In this book, Yoneyama attends to the post-1990s redress of the Japanese war crimes committed during World War II and
8 My interview with Chen is available on Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park’s Facebook fan page, from https://www.facebook.com/JMHRI/posts/3328124247277254. The full text of the interview is also included as the appendix at the end of this thesis.
America’s intervention in the Asia-Pacific region during the Cold War. Although Yoneyama does not discuss the 228 Incident and White Terror in her book, I think it is valuable to test out her framework with the case of Taiwan because this framework provides a transpacific perspective that helps us perceive foreign countries’ influences on the 228 Incident and White Terror.
Among existing studies on the 228 Incident, most attribute this event to ethnic and cultural conflicts between the mainlanders and local Taiwanese. For example, Yi- shen Chen (陳儀深) states that the 228 Incident broke out not only because the Chinese Nationalist misgovernment drove people to revolt, but the ethnic conflicts could also be one of the causes (54). Besides, Hsiao-feng Lee (李筱峰) considers that, after 50 years of Japanese rule, Taiwan had already developed into a nation with higher cultural literacy. After World War II, the Chinese Nationalist government officials with a lower level of cultural literacy ruled the local Taiwanese. They did not live up to Taiwanese people’s expectations and thus aroused the latter’s sense of dissatisfaction and resentment (204). According to Chen and Lee, Chinese Nationalist misadministration and the cultural gaps between the two ethnic groups could be the main causes of the 228 Incident. Tsui-lien Chen (陳翠蓮) nonetheless claims that the existing domestic studies neglect foreign powers’ impacts on the event. To enrich existing studies on the 228 Incident, Chen in her book Reconstructing February 28th (2017) proposes a transpacific perspective and brings the role of the U.S. government into discussion. She reminds us of the U.S.-Chinese Nationalist alliance during the post-World War II period. Right after World War II, the U.S. government chose the Chinese Nationalist government as the cooperative partner to build the anti-
communist networks in the Asia-Pacific region. The U.S. government offered the Chinese Nationalist government economic and military aids, helping the Chinese
Nationalist government consolidate its rule in Taiwan (21). Due to the U.S.-Chinese Nationalist alliance, the American government only expressed concern towards the Chinese Nationalist government’s armed suppression but did not intervene in the 228 Incident (22). By adopting a transpacific perspective, we can have a more
comprehensive view of the postwar situation in Taiwan.
In Cold War Ruins, Yoneyama also proposes a transpacific perspective to look at the belated (i.e. since 1990s) redress of the Japanese and U.S. war crimes committed during World War II and the postwar period. From Yoneyama’s perspective, one cause for the calling for historical justice to come so late has been that “transitional justice in the aftermath of World War II was no more than ‘victor’s justice’” (16).
Yoneyama’s point is that justice in the postwar period was determined by the victors who had the privilege of drawing lines between “the aggrieved and the aggressors, the redressable and the unredressable, the forgiven and the unforgiven” (ix). She takes the U.S.’s post-WWII alliance with Japan as an example. Although few Allied nations supported the United States’ leniency toward the war crimes of Japan, the U.S.
dominated the postwar order because of its military supremacy. Not until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War did the public start to call attention to the not-yet-addressed Japanese war crimes and the U.S. “injustice” in Asia Pacific in the aftermath of World War II.
Yoneyama not only investigates the causes of the un-redressability of Japanese war crimes and American injustices during the years immediately after WWII but also scrutinizes the administration of transitional justice across the Pacific since the 1990s.
Yoneyama questions “the global rush toward juridical forms of redress and reconciliation,” contending that justice needs to be urgently “dejudicialized” and
“repoliticized” (13). According to Yoneyama, we should remain suspicious of the
judicialization of justice, such as setting up laws on transitional justice in order to call perpetrators to account and compensate victims, because such juridical form of redress “blanket[s] every situation and every possible dispute” (14). Put it differently, the judicialization of justice draws clear lines between perpetrators/victims, guilty/not guilty, and right/wrong, forcing people to fall into a binary knowledge structure. In the case of Taiwan society, such a binary opposition traps different ethnic groups
primarily mainlanders and local Taiwanese into hatred and confrontations in the past, making social reconciliation and re-understanding of each other difficult.
Since perceiving the inadequacies of achieving justice through legalization, Yoneyama proposes that the concept of justice should be repoliticized. In Cold War Ruins, she argues that the institutional and epistemic structures which have taken hold of the world after World War II should be interrogated, and the master narrative of World War II memories should be revaluated. As a result, when examining the pursuits of Japanese war crimes and U.S. injustice, Yoneyama adopts a transpacific perspective in order to reopen discussions on historical events by rendering visible the multiple forces—both domestic and international—involved in war crimes and avoid falling into a simplistic opposition of victims and perpetrators. Yoneyama states,
“post-Cold War redress culture…can and ought to be seen as an integral part of the politicization of justice that ‘open[s] up a dispute on the terrain of knowledge’” (15).
According to Yoneyama, transitional justice is a continuous project, which cannot stop with judicialization but continue with transformative knowledge.
Compared with Yoneyama’s contention, the existing studies on transitional justice in Taiwan tend to be limited by the concept of judicialization, trying to make a clear distinction between perpetrators and victims. In 2015, Taiwan Association for Truth and Reconciliation published The Struggle of Memory against Forgetting. This
set of books, consisting of three volumes, is an interim report on transitional justice in Taiwan. Nai-teh Wu’s (吳乃德) introduction to volume one explains his
understanding of transitional justice. Wu regards transitional justice as a project to cope with the issues of justice during a nation’s transformation from autocracy to democracy. He claims that there are three main tasks of transitional justice: “to reckon with perpetrators, to compensate the victims, and to preserve the memory of historical events” (19). Jau-yuan Hwang (黃昭元) in “Transitional Justice in Postwar Taiwan”
(2016) also examines the practice of transitional justice in present Taiwan. Hwang claims that Taiwan has taken an approach centered on victim reparation, such as government apologies, monetary compensation, restitution of honor, and return of the victims’ family letters, last wills, and diaries to their families, while legal liabilities of wrongdoers are ignored. He then makes some suggestions for future improvement, including taking a combined approach of “naming the key perpetrators,” “guilty without penalty” (181), and liquidating the KMT’s ill-gotten party assets which were acquired improperly and illegally during KMT’s authoritarian rule in Taiwan.
In Wu’s and Hwang’s view, calling the perpetrators to account is an integral part of transitional justice. Wu and Hwang seem to consider that transitional justice will be accomplished through juridical forms of redress. However, it is questionable whether justice and social reconciliation could be achieved in this way. As I discussed,
drawing a clear distinction between perpetrators and victims may make people fall into a binary opposition and trap them into the enmities in the past. In my opinion, setting up laws, investigating the perpetrators’ responsibilities, and compensating the victims are part of the transitional justice process but not the telos. Transitional justice should orient towards social reconciliation in the future, rather than being trapped in the past.
Indeed, Yoneyama’s study of the post-1990s transborder redress culture fosters a future-oriented view. Proposing to reopen the studies of Japanese and American war crimes committed during and in the aftermath of World War II, Yoneyama deals with the past under the present situation and connects the historical trauma to the present.
Although the redress pursuits studied by Yoneyama in her book happened long after the war crimes and political injustice were committed, the belatedness of Yoneyama’s study has its significance because it makes the connection between past, present, and future possible. By putting the 228 Incident and White Terror within Yoneyama’s framework, I hope to reckon with the historical trauma at present and from a point of view of the young generation.
To make my study of the memories of the 228 Incident and White Terror focused, I choose Shawna Yang Ryan’s Green Island (2016) and Detention (2019) directed by Han-chiang Hsu as primary texts. Green Island begins with the birth of the unnamed narrator on February 28, 1947, the day of the start of the island-wide uprising known as the 228 Incident. Soon after the narrator was born, her father, Dr.
Tsai, was dragged away from his family by the Chinese Nationalist soldiers and became one of the men who disappeared during the White Terror period. After eleven years of imprisonment, Dr. Tsai returned home. He became cautious and enigmatic, haunted by his years in jail as well as the unbearable suffering of his betrayal of friends. In 1970, the narrator got married to her husband Lin Wei and they left Taiwan for Berkeley, California. Not long after their migration, the narrator found that her family were still not safe from the Chinese Nationalist government’s threat even when they were in America.
I am interested in Green Island because, firstly, it offers a vivid portrayal of the 228 incident and White Terror. Especially in the beginning part of the novel, Ryan
retells the historical event, trying to bring her readers back to the moment when the 228 Incident happened. The second interesting point is the author’s perspective. Ryan is not a person who is directly involved in the 228 Incident and White Terror, yet she spent fourteen years doing lots of research, trying to approach the historical events from a young generation’s perspective. Thirdly, Ryan brings in a transnational perspective, attempting to retell the history from a Taiwanese American’s point of view. Fourthly, Green Island presents the haunting impacts of historical trauma beyond a specific time and space. In this novel, the trauma sweeps across generations and spans two countries, Taiwan and the US. Last, I find Green Island particularly interesting because the distinction between victims/non-victims and guilty/not guilty in this novel is obscured. Ryan proposes that victims of the 228 Incident and White Terror are not limited to the political prisoners who were tortured, imprisoned, executed, and directly involved in the historical events.
Detention is an adaption of the 2D atmosphere horror video game of the same title, set in the 1960s during the Martial Law period. This film begins with the main character Fang Ray-shin’s (方芮欣) awakening in a darkened and deserted
classroom. She finds that Wei Zhong-ting (魏仲廷) and herself are trapped inside the long-neglected Greenwood High School campus. What’s worse, the whole campus has become an ominous place rampaged by demons and monsters. They have to escape from the disused school, figure out what happened, and search for the missing teachers Zhang Ming-hui (張明輝) and Yin Tsui-han (殷翠涵), as well as other classmates who are the members of an underground reading club. As the plot develops, Fang gradually remembers what she has done. Due to the unharmonious parental relationship, Fang relies on the counseling teacher Zhang and falls in love with him. In order to make teachers Zhang and Yin break up, Fang becomes the
whistle-blower who reports the banned books to the military instructor Bai, which causes both teachers’ death sentence.
Detention is chosen for this project first because it brings interesting echoes to Green Island. This film also shapes the main character, Fang, as a snitch who betrays her friend and suffers from the sense of guilt. Besides, the portrayal of Fang which reminds us of the characterization of Dr. Tsai9 in Green Island enables us to avoid falling into a simplistic knowledge structure of the perpetrators and victims. But there are not only similarities between the two texts but also differences. In Green Island, Ryan realistically portrays the state apparatus. There are vivid descriptions of how the Nationalist government oppressed political dissidents and civilians in the novel.
Detention, instead of vividly giving the viewers a realistic portrayal, presents the state apparatus in a symbolic way, through a zombie-like figure wearing shabby military uniform and shackles. Such symbolic representation makes it difficult for viewers to identify what the source of the violence is. In addition, I find Detention interesting because it illustrates the idea of acting out and working through in trauma theory. In his book Writing History, Writing Trauma (2001), Dominick LaCapra states that
“acting out is related to repetition, and even the repetition compulsion—the tendency to repeat something compulsively” (142). According to LaCapra, people who undergo a trauma “have a tendency to relive the past” (142) and seem to be caught in the past,
“with no distance from it” (143). Only through “working through” can the subject gain critical distance on a problem and to distinguish between past, present and future (143). In other words, working through means that a person is capable of freeing
9 Here, although I claim that Fang and Dr. Tsai share similarities because they were both informers who betrayed friends, I also see the distinctions between the two characters. Dr. Tsai became a political prisoner and suffered from the physical and mental confinement on Green Island because he demanded Taiwan’s autonomy. To protect his family, Dr. Tsai became a forced accomplice.
Nevertheless, Fang was not a coerced accomplice. She betrayed friends and made fatal mistakes out of jealousy.
himself or herself from the past and starts to review what happened from a “critical distance” (143). At the beginning of Detention, since Fang has no courage to recall what she has done and confront her faults, she is trapped in the haunted place, reliving the traumatic experience compulsively. At the end of the film, Fang decides to
confront her mistakes and helps Wei escape from the ominous space. Ultimately, Wei becomes the survivor who represents the possibility of working through the trauma.
The aforementioned points make Green Island and Detention relevant to my thesis project. Briefly, in my project, I intend to bring the two texts into comparison to study how they converse with each other. My main concern will be to what extent Green Island and Detention enrich our remembrance of the 228 Incident and White Terror and open up alternative ways to confront trauma and conceive justice.
III. Outline of Chapters
This thesis consists of four chapters. In this introductory chapter, I review existing approaches to the 228 Incident, White Terror, and transitional justice in Taiwan. Among existing scholarship, most put emphasis on revealing historical facts, naming the perpetrators and compensating the victims. From my perspective, these approaches attempt to draw a clear line between perpetrators/victims, victims/non- victims and guilty/not guilty, which forces people to fall into an oversimplified knowledge structure. To avoid such simplistic binary opposition, I bring into
discussion Yoneyama’s theoretical texts, which investigate the post-1990s transborder redress culture and the concept of re-politicization of justice. Yoneyama’s framework provides a transpacific perspective which helps me perceive the foreign countries’
impacts on the 228 Incident and White Terror. Besides, her framework heralds a more comprehensive view of the postwar situation of Taiwan. This thesis project aims to
explore a transnational view in the case of Taiwan and also reconceptualize the idea of justice beyond the victim/perpetrator binary opposition.
In chapter two, I explore the literary representation of the 228 Incident and White Terror in Ryan’s Green Island. In the first section of this chapter, I draw attention to Ryan’s vivid portrayal of the U.S. government’s complicity with the Chinese
Nationalist government during the post-World War II period and the Cold War era. In Green Island, Ryan expressly manifests the U.S.-Chinese Nationalist alliance and reminds her readers of the United States’ presence in the White Terror period. I
contend that, by rendering visible such complicity and re-examining the U.S. injustice in the postwar period, Ryan brings in a transpacific perspective and opens up a view for us to perceive the foreign countries’ impacts on the 228 Incident and White Terror.
In the next section, I borrow the concepts of “acting out” and “working through”
proposed by Dominick LaCapra to examine the characters’ experiences with trauma in Green Island. By portraying how the narrator “works through” her traumatic
experience, I infer that Ryan provides a future-oriented view for readers to look at historical traumas.
Chapter three extends my discussion to the cinematic representation of the White Terror in Detention (2019). I divide this chapter into three sections. In the first
section, I make a comparison between the narrative strategies adopted in Green Island and Detention. I spotlight on Hsu’s symbolic representation of the persecutors and past atrocities in contrast to Ryan’s more realistic method. In the second section, I focus on the storyline of the main female character Fang. I contend that, by shaping Fang as a victim-victimizer, Detention blurs the distinction between perpetrators and victims and reminds its audience not to fall into a simplistic binary knowledge structure when they confront historical trauma. I conclude this chapter by analyzing
how the two main characters Fang and Wei “act out” and “work through” their traumatic experience. By presenting the two main characters’ process of “working through” the trauma, Detention opens up possibilities for the future and foregrounds a future-oriented view of historical traumas.
In the concluding chapter, I reflect on a few recent events happening in Taiwan, which are related to the issues of transitional justice and development of Taiwan’s democracy. These events include National Taiwan University’s disapproval of setting up a task force on campus to promote transitional justice, the enactment of the Anti- Infiltration Act (反滲透法), and National Communications Commission’s (NCC) refusal to renew the broadcast license for CTi News (中天新聞). Through a brief discussion of these events, I hope to connect my research to current concerns and propel readers to reexamine Taiwan’s democracy. The thesis ends with an appendix of my interview with the writer and White Terror victim Lieh Chen (陳列).
Chapter Two: Green Island
In 1999, after finishing her undergraduate degree, Shawna Yang Ryan had a plan to move to Taiwan and lived with her relatives for a year. When she left, her writing professor told her, “You are going to come back with a book.” At first, Ryan thought the professor meant she would write many words in Taiwan and would end up writing a book. However, that was not what happened. What happened was that, at the end of her journey, Ryan paid a visit to the National 228 Memorial Museum and
unexpectedly encountered George Kerr’s Formosa Betrayed (1965). Ryan told Brian Hioe in an interview for the New Bloom Magazine that she was astonished by
Taiwan’s dark history—The 228 Incident, March Massacre, and White Terror because she “did not know anything about it” (Hioe, par. 5). Since perceiving her “ignorance”
of the dark pages of Taiwan history, Ryan started to have a strong desire to learn more about the history of Taiwan and trace her origin from Taiwan.
In 2002, Ryan received a three-year Fulbright research grant to do her writing project in Taiwan, embarking on her journey towards understanding Taiwanese history. During her study period, Ryan visited historical sites and conducted abundant interviews with survivors of the 228 Incident, March Massacre, and White Terror. In an interview for The New York Times, Ryan depicted:
Most of the people I spoke with were of the generation who remembered 2/28 or who had lost family members. I also spoke to the generation after them, who told me about life under martial law and of their youth in the ’60s and ’70s. (Tatlow, par. 9)
After returning to the United States, Ryan continued to gather historical materials and interviewed first-generation Taiwanese Americans and their families. Overall, Ryan
devoted fourteen years to doing research and composing Green Island.
Naming the novel’s title after Green Island, Ryan elucidated:
“Green Island” works on a number of levels—it’s the prison where one of the characters is held, a prison emblematic of the period of the “White Terror” during which the book takes place. I think of Taiwan as “green island” as well—verdant and beautiful—but during martial law, it had become a kind of prison itself. (Tatlow, par. 7)
The title of her novel thus not only refers to the island which was utilized to
incarcerate the political dissidents who opposed the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Nationalist government during the martial law period but also signifies Taiwan under martial law in general, which was imprisoned and silenced by the government’s dictatorial rule and lost its vibrancy and freedom.
In her interview for Taipei Times, Ryan further stated that she wanted Green Island to be “authentic” to Taiwanese who experienced the 228 Massacre and White Terror and also “educative” to non-Taiwanese readers who have interests in the history of Taiwan (Ter, par. 7). Ryan intended to make the novel a vehicle for the 228 and White Terror memory, rendering visible the sacrifice made by Taiwanese and Taiwanese Americans, martyrs and flawed survivors, for Taiwan’s freedom and democracy. Not only did Ryan bring into light Taiwan’s dark history, but she also emphasized her intention to think Taiwan’s history from a different perspective, rather than make it an “appendage of the Chinese world” (Hioe, par. 24). When asked about how to situate Green Island in contemporary Asian American literature, Ryan did not give a direct answer but remarked that “I’ve tried to write against [the] dominant narrative of China […] I want to give [Taiwan] its own place that is not within that bubble [of the Chinese diaspora]” (Hioe, par. 24). In Ryan’s view, Asian American
literature is not all about Chinese American literature. By retelling the 228 and White Terror history of Taiwan from a Taiwanese American’s perspective, Ryan wanted to present the diversity of Asian American literature and underscore the specificity of Taiwan’s history.
Published in 2016, Green Island unearths Taiwan’s hidden history during the period from the 228 Incident and the March Massacre in 1947 to the subsequent White Terror. Ryan captured how the state violence crept into ordinary people’s quotidian life, spotlighting on their life experiences, inner struggles, and remorse.
Green Island begins with the birth of the unnamed female narrator on February 28, 1947, the day that initiated the island-wide uprising known as the 228 Incident. Soon after the narrator was born, her father, Dr. Tsai, was dragged away from his family by the Chinese Nationalist (the Kuomintang or KMT) soldiers and became one of the men who disappeared during the White Terror period. After eleven years of
incarceration, Dr. Tsai returned home. He became cautious and enigmatic, haunted by his years in jail as well as his guilt of being the survivor. In his eldest son Dua Hyan’s words, “He is broken” (100). Shortly after his return, two secret police officers forced Dr. Tsai to write a letter to his friend Su Ming Guo to lure him to cease his exile and return to Taiwan. In order to protect his own life and his family, Dr. Tsai became a coerced accomplice of the Chinese Nationalist government and was mired in
unbearable suffering of his betrayal of a friend. In 1970, the narrator married Lin Wei and the couple soon left Taiwan for Berkeley, California. Not long after this, the narrator found that her family was under surveillance and threat. Even when they were in America, the Lin family still could not extricate themselves from the long arm of the state violence and the government’s practice of White Terror.
Starting the novel with the 228 Incident, Ryan claimed that the 228 Incident is
the “pivot point” for Taiwanese people to reflect upon their identity (Hioe, par. 11). In 1947, Taiwan had been released from Japanese colonial rule. After the Chinese Nationalist government took hold, Taiwanese people anticipated a higher level of autonomy and democracy. However, because they were ruled by the Japanese, the Chinese Nationalist government was suspicious of them and treated them as second- class citizens. In Ryan’s view, it is after the 228 Massacre that people of Taiwan started to reexamine their own identity.
The positive receptions and feedback Green Island has received since its publication bear witness to the broad interests in the historical memories of
undemocratic Taiwan. Discussing the fictional device (i.e. the unnamed first-person female narrative) utilized by Ryan in Green Island, Yi-huei Wang (王怡惠) in her book review asserted that “Green Island takes a progressive move beyond the legacy of history dominated by nationalists, historians, and authoritative discourse” (249).
Wang explicated “Taiwanese history is either written by the colonialists or is
reconstructed by the Chinese Nationalists” (251). By retelling the history of Taiwan from a female narrative and demonstrating the unnamed female narrator’s life
experience, Ryan “undermine[s] the monolithic discourses of macro-history” (251). In Wang’s view, Green Island subverts the dominant male narrative in the 228 and White Terror writing, providing a different approach to rethink hi/stories from the
perspective of her-stories.
Fang-ming Chen (陳芳明) in his book review also attended to the female narrative in Green Island. Chen proposed that “the history of postwar Taiwan is actually the history of Taiwanese females” (150). He then elucidated “when men are facing the fate of being slaughtered by the Chinese Nationalist government, women undertake the responsibility of preserving the historical memories” (151). In Chen’s
view, Ryan captured crucial transitions in each historical period, successfully spoke up for women who were influenced by the White Terror, and voiced out their true feelings.
In his comment on Green Island, Shuo-bin Su (蘇碩斌) considers that this novel not only accuses the past atrocities but presents “femininity against revolutionary masculinity” (par. 13). Narrating from a female perspective, which is rare in the 228 and White Terror writing, Ryan interrogates the meaning of revolution and portrays civilians’ predicaments of pursuing ordinary happiness under the martial law.
Ryan in the Initium Media interview contended that “Green Island is absolutely a feminist novel” (Yi-ying Huang, par. 24). She observed that most political fictions regarding the White Terror are narrated from males’ perspective. Taiwanese women are marginalized from the White Terror discourse. As a result, in Green Island, Ryan portrays the life of the political prisoner’s wife and daughter, providing the voice for the silenced females during the White Terror period.
Yi-chen Chen (陳怡蓁)’s M.A. thesis is the first thesis on Green Island in Taiwan which investigates the quests of Taiwanese people for identity and
subjectivity. Chen foregrounded the necessity to reexamine how the trajectories of colonialism complicate the formation of Taiwanese identity and Taiwanese-centered subjectivity. She explored the relationship between “Taiwanese colonial experiences”
and “Taiwanese overseas experiences” (12) by comparing the storylines of Dr. Tsai and Lin Wei. Chen asserted that the two characters’ experiences of overseas studies, respectively in Japan and America, influence the way they resist against the colonial powers in Taiwan. In addition, Chen also compared the storylines of Li Min and the unnamed female narrator, investigating the gender resistance to colonial power in homeplaces.
Wei-chung Ting (丁威中) in his thesis approached Green Island from a different perspective. By borrowing Foucault’s and Agamben’s framework of biopolitics, Ting analyzed “how Taiwanese people are disciplined as docile bodies and turned into bare life” during the White Terror period (21). Ting then proposed that the state apparatus of the Chinese Nationalist government “obliterates Taiwanese subjectivity and
induces collective historical amnesia” through pervasive surveillance and a serious of disciplinary mechanisms (vi). Ting contended that the Tsai family’s three-generation postmemory serves as a medium to “awaken the narrator’s identity” and “beckon collective historical memory of Taiwan” (22).
While Green Island received mostly positive receptions, criticisms of this novel should not be ignored. Chi-an Weng (翁稷安) in The New Lens contended that “Green Island is full of stereotypical portrayals of the persecuted” (par. 4). As Weng puts it, the characterization in Green Island is too flat and the storylines of each character are predictable and monotonous. Nonetheless, rather than totally repudiating the novel, Weng asserted that Green Island could be considered as “necessary banality” (par. 9).
Weng’s point is that Green Island may be a good starting point for readers who have interest in but know little about Taiwan.
The book commentaries and scholarly works reviewed above provide different approaches to Green Island. Yet none of them address Ryan’s attempts to re-politicize justice and trauma. In this regard, my chapter focuses on Ryan’s Taiwanese American and young-generation point of view. And the uniqueness of Ryan’s perspective would become clear if we compare Green Island with works written by domestic writers themed on the White Terror, such as Mountain Road (1983) by Ying-zhen Chen (陳映 真) and Moon Reflection (1984) by Song-fen Guo (郭松棻).
Both short novels portray how Taiwanese people lived under martial law,
centering on the profound influences of the White Terror on ordinary people’s quotidian life. Mountain Road revolves around three leftists, Li Guokun (李國坤), Huang Zhenbo (黃貞柏), and Tsai Qianhui (蔡千惠), who shared the same dream of devoting themselves to building up a bright future for Taiwan. However, due to the betrayal of Qianhui’s elder brother, Guokun was executed and Zhenbo was
incarcerated. To make amends for her brother’s betrayal, Qianhui pretended to be Guokun’s wife, dedicating all her life to the Li family. Moon Reflection follows a self- sacrificing woman Wenhui (文惠), who devoted herself to taking good care of her weak husband Tiemin (鐵敏). After recovering from tuberculosis, Tiemin plunged into a leftist group and gradually alienated Wenhui. Driven by frustration and jealousy, Wenhui reported to the police that Tiemin had a trunk of banned books, which results in her husband’s death sentence.
Written in the first years of 1980s, Mountain Road and Moon Reflection made audacious attempts at the domestic White Terror writing and set a precedent in the political literature in Taiwan. Yu-li Tang (唐毓麗) stated that political fiction which had prevailed in Taiwan since the 1980s was a literary genre that should not be ignored. The rise and development of political fiction were closely related to the historical transformation that Taiwan underwent in the 1980s (par. 2). Since the 228 Incident broke out in 1947 and the martial law was promulgated in 1949, Taiwanese people were silenced and the literary works themed on the 228 Incident, political persecutions, and government’s malefactions almost vanished due to the Chinese Nationalist government’s close surveillance and scrutiny. Not until the Formosa
Incident10 and the homicide cases of the Lin family,11 Chen Wen-cheng (陳文成),12 and Henry Liu (劉宜良)13 successively occurred and raised international awareness did the KMT government gradually gave up its single-party dictatorship and change its official policy on arts and literature. As Ming-li Zheng (鄭明娳) put it, “since 1980, the government’s official policy on arts and literature became a no-policy policy which allowed various kinds of viewpoints and voices” (54). On account of the change in policies and the government’s gradual transformation from autocracy to democracy since the 1980s, local Taiwanese writers had a larger room to express their thoughts and opinions through literature. In his book Ruei-jin Peng (彭瑞金) also investigated the rise of the political literature in Taiwan. He regarded the Formosa Incident as the turning point, recounting that “the expansion of the opinion sphere after the Formosa Incident was crucial to the rise and development of political fiction in Taiwan” (220).
Published in 1983 and 1984 respectively, Mountain Road and Moon Reflection are considered as pioneering works in the political literature in Taiwan. The two
10 The Formosa Incident is also known as the Meilidao Incident or Kaohsiung Incident, which was a crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations on December 10, 1979. At then, Taiwan was under martial law and single-party rule. Protesters were demanding an end to martial law and calling for democracy, freedom, and human rights. The Formosa Incident caused international keen attention, which pressed the KMT government to hold an open trial on the accused. The Formosa Incident is regarded as the seminal event on the development of democracy in Taiwan.
11 Lin Yi-hsiung (林義雄) was a politician and one of the major leaders of the democratization movement in Taiwan. In 1979, he was arrested for his involvement in the Formosa Incident. On February 28 in 1980, Lin’s mother and twin daughters were murdered, which is known as the homicide case of the Lin Family (林宅血案). There are still no suspects to this day.
12 Chen Wen-chen was a Taiwanese assistant professor of mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University.
He was known to criticize the KMT government and support the Formosa Magazine. On July 2 in 1981, Chen was detained and interrogated by the Garrison Command. His body was found on the campus of National Taiwan University the next day. The case remains unsolved until today.
13 Henry Liu, known by his pen name Chiang Nan (江南), was a Taiwanese American writer and journalist. He was a critic of the KMT and most famous for writing an unauthorized biography of
Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), then president of the Republic of China (ROC). Liu later became a naturalized citizen of the United States and resided in California. In 1984, Liu was assassinated in his garage by the Bamboo Union members who had been reported trained by the ROC military intelligence.
novels share the following features. First, both novels feature a mysterious opening.
Mountain Road begins with a scene in the sickroom. The main character Tsai Qianhui was hospitalized, weakly lying on the sickbed due to the rapid health deterioration.
Moon Reflection begins with a scene that the main character Tiemin was carried home on a stretcher. When reading the beginning of the two novels, readers are soon drawn into the plot yet have no ideas of what exactly happened to those characters. Only at the end of the novels readers comprehend that the main characters were persecuted by the government and they were victims of the White Terror. Second, Chen and Guo adopted a cautious and reserved writing strategy when narrating the cruelties of the government. In her review on Ryan’s writing strategy in Green Island, Ming-ying Tsai (蔡旻螢) brought into discussion Mountain Road and Moon Reflection. Tsai stated that Chen and Guo tended to obscure the atrocities of political persecution by utilizing phrases such as “white mist” or “unnamable pressure” to allude to the political
atmosphere during the White Terror (par.7). As an obvious example, Chen in Mountain Road used “a vast expanse of whiteness” to describe the escalating mass arrest (85). In addition, Chen and Guo did not make clear who the persecutors were.
The oppressors remain unknown at the end of Mountain Road, and the source of violence is identified as a vague “police” in Moon Reflection. Third, Chen and Guo proposed Taiwan’s domestic perspective to look at the historical trauma. Spotlighting on the conflicts between the Chinese Nationalist government and the local Taiwanese, none of the two novels bring to light international politics or the foreign causes of the 228 Incident and White Terror.
Compared with Mountain Road and Moon Reflection, Green Island opened on the day when the 228 Incident broke out and Ryan’s intention to write about the 228 Incident and White Terror is clear in the very beginning of the novel. Besides, Ryan
realistically delineated in her novel the cruelties and atrocities imposed by the Chinese Nationalist government on political dissidents and civilians during the White Terror period. Moreover, Ryan retold the historical trauma from a Taiwanese American perspective, which introduced a transpacific view and highlighted the role of the U.S.
government. Overall, Green Island gave its readers a larger scope and a more comprehensive view of the postwar situation in Taiwan.
In the following discussion of Green Island, I first draw attention to Ryan’s vivid portrayal of the U.S. government’s tacit complicity with the Chinese Nationalist government during the post-WWII period and the Cold War era. In Green Island, Ryan expressly manifested the U.S.-Chinese Nationalist alliance, reminding her readers of the United States’ presence in the White Terror period. I contend that, by rendering visible such complicity and re-examining the U.S. injustice in the postwar period, Ryan brought in a transpacific perspective and opened up a new view for the readers to look at the historical trauma. In the second section, I explore Ryan’s portrayal of the haunting influences of historical trauma beyond a specific time and space. I will look into the characters’ position in relation to the trauma, examining how they “act out” and “work through” their traumatic experience in the novel. I conclude this chapter by analyzing particularly the ending part of the novel, which narrates the unnamed narrator’s visit to the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum.
I. The U.S.-Chinese Nationalist Alliance/Complicity
After the end of WWII, the vast areas of Asia and the Pacific previously occupied by and colonized by the Japanese empire were being emancipated from Japan’s imperial rule and coming under the political, economic, and military dominance of the United States. In her essay “Traveling Memories, Contagious
Justice: Americanization of Japanese War Crimes at the End of the Post-Cold War”
Yoneyama contended that the master narrative disseminating in the postwar period regarded WWII as a “good war” because the war “not only liberated Asians, including Japanese themselves, from Japan’s military fanaticism, but also rehabilitated them into free and prosperous citizens of the democratic world” (58). In her book Cold War Ruins Yoneyama stated that such “good war” narrative shaped the United States as
“the benefactor of equality, freedom, and democracy” (21). Yoneyama’s point is that the mainstream narrative in the postwar years was narrated from the American position, and the United States was shaped as a defender of the free world and a custodian of world peace and humanity.
Right after WWII, the United States powerfully dominated the postwar order by making good use of its military and economic ascendancy. On the one hand,
concerning that East Asia would fall under the Communist control in the postwar period, the U.S. government included Japan into the anti-communist networks in the Asia-Pacific region and helped restore Japan’s economic dominance in the region. On the other hand, to reestablish the postwar order and contain communism in East Asia, the U.S. government chose the Chinese Nationalist government led by Chiang Kai- shek (蔣中正) as the cooperative partner and appointed the Chinese Nationalist government to take over Taiwan. At the same time, the Chinese Nationalist
government was mired in the Chinese Civil War14 and was in urgent need of the U.S.
economic and military aids. Based on the principle of reciprocity, the U.S.-Chinese Nationalist alliance was formed. According to Tsui-lien Chen (陳翠蓮), the
14 The Chinese Civil War was a civil war in China fought between the KMT-led government of the ROC and the Communist Party of China (CPC) intermittently between 1927 and 1949. Finally, the CPC gained control of Mainland China, established the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and forced the KMT to retreat to Taiwan.
cooperation between the U.S. and ROC was hierarchical: the U.S. government dominated and made major policies, while the Chinese Nationalist government cooperated, assisted, and implemented the policies. Following the principle of not violating the United States’ national interests, the U.S. government would support the Chinese Nationalist government’s reigning authority (21).
Aware of the U.S.-Chinese Nationalist alliance/complicity in the post-WWII period and during the Cold War, Ryan considered that the United States also had historical responsibility for Taiwan’s Martial Law and White Terror. Ryan in an interview for the Initium Media asserted that “the U.S. government promised to bring in democracy to Taiwan, but, at the same time, supported and provided financial aids to the Chiang Kai-shek regime in order to block the Communist Party of China” (Yi- ying Huang, par. 18). Here Ryan underscored the United States’ ambiguous position towards postwar Taiwan. She noticed that, on the one hand, the U.S. attempted to play the role as a defender of democratic values. On the other hand, the U.S. supported the Chinese Nationalist government’s authoritarian rule in Taiwan.
In Green Island, Ryan rendered visible the U.S.-Chinese Nationalist alliance, vividly delineating the U.S. government’s indifferent stance on the 228 Incident. At the beginning of the novel, several days after the 228 Incident broke out, the
governor-general Chen Yi (陳儀) convened a meeting15 with the civilians to find out a solution to the unrest. The unnamed narrator’s father Dr. Tsai attended the meeting, stating that “since the money of democracy was helping to fund the war against the communists, it seemed only right that the Republic of China should apply those same
15 In my view, the meeting Ryan mentioned in the novel referred to the first meeting convened by the Settlement Committee for the 228 Incident (二二八事件處理委員會) on March 2 in 1947. The committee was established by the local leaders, aiming to reckon with the uprising and present people’s demands for reform of the government. The KMT government also assigned officials to the meeting, yet Chen Yi did not attend the meeting personally. Here is one of the occasions where a fictional plot evokes historical reality, which is characteristic of Ryan’s narrative style.
principles on the island” (19). Dr. Tsai then referred to “the friendship between Generalissimo Chiang and the United States” and requested Taiwanese representation in the new government (19). According to the narrator, after WWII, the rhetoric of American democracy prevailed in Taiwan. Dr. Tsai firmly believed in the U.S.’s pro- democracy propaganda campaign after the war. However, such a belief turned out to be ironic because the United States, as the “benefactor of equality, freedom, and democracy,” did not take any action to intervene in the 228 Incident and March Massacre. Instead, the U.S. government chose to turn a blind eye to the persecutions and atrocities done by the Chinese Nationalist government.
The U.S.-Chinese Nationalist complicity becomes even more obvious if we take a look at the American consulate’s stance presented in Green Island. Days after the meeting that Dr. Tsai attended and expressed his demands in public, Dr. Tsai was dragged out from his home by the Chinese Nationalist soldiers for the reason that the government suspected that Dr. Tsai demanded Taiwan independence and accused the KMT of not adhering to democratic values. To rescue her husband, Dr. Tsai’s wife Li Min went to the police office first and then sought help from the American consulate.
However, “the guards [of the American consulate] blotted out any mark of concern and stared past the women [those whose husbands were also arrested and missing in the mass arrests]” (27). As for the officials in the consulate, they “must have seen the women down below wailing at the gate—but then they passed again into the building recesses” (27). From Ryan’s description, the American consulate just sat by and did not take any action to help victims of the 228 Incident.
While talking about his father’s death, Jia Bao,16 a Taiwan democracy
16 In the acknowledgements of Green Island Ryan wrote, “for Jia Bao’s storyline, I drew on the experiences of Peng Ming-min [an activist who promoted democracy and independence for Taiwan], Henry Liu, and Chen Wen-cheng to understand the various legal and extralegal mechanisms the
movement activist and a close friend of Lin Wei’s family, also mentioned the
American consulate. He told the narrator his father died in the March Massacre. When his father’s body was found, “a man from the American consulate came and took a picture” (218). The narrator then asked Jia Bao how the American consulate dealt with the picture. Jia Bao retorted that “what could they do? It was none of their business. An internal matter. The Generalissimo was an ally. You don’t criticize your friends” (218). Because the United States intended to build Taiwan as part of its anti- communist networks in the Asia-Pacific region, the U.S. government turned a blind eye to the malefactions done by the Chinese Nationalist government.
The complicity between the U.S. and the Chinese Nationalist government did not end after the United States severed diplomatic relations with the ROC. After
migrating to America, in 1979, the narrator found out that:
American campuses were full of student spies who had been bribed with plane tickets and show tickets and other cheap trinkets by the
Nationalists. Speak a wrong word in New Haven and your cousin in Kaohsiung would lose his job. (188-189)
Ryan vividly portrayed the long arm of the state violence and the transborder impacts of the White Terror. The narrator commented on the student spies’ surveillance, criticizing that “none of the terror could have happened without the tacit agreement of the American government, Taiwan’s former and closest ally” (189).
The complicity between the two governments can also be seen through the U.S.
government’s perfunctory attitude towards the violence imposed by the Chinese Nationalist government. For example, the U.S. government took a perfunctory attitude
KMT government used to control its challengers” (384). This is another example that fiction resonates with the reality.
towards Jia Bao’s assassination. The narrator recounted that “we heard rumors that on the U.S. side, the government urged the police to solve the incident [Jia Bao’s
assassination] quietly and quickly in the wake of Taiwan’s new status. It would be too embarrassing if it was known that the United States had allowed the KMT to run amok on American soil” (294). It was because of the U.S. government’s inaction and acquiescence that the Chinese Nationalist government recklessly conducted
delinquent behaviors in the United States.
In the novel, not long after the narrator and her husband Lin Wei went back to Taiwan in 1982, they were taken away by two uniformed men from the Garrison Command for the reason that Lin Wei was accused of sedition. At first, the narrator believed that the Garrison Command would not harm them because the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) would investigate into the arrest. Yet, the narrator also recalled there were cases in which people who fell victim to the Garrison Command just disappeared without any trace. She then realized that “I am an American citizen”
(334, emphasis original) could mean nothing to the Garrison Command. Luckily, after hours of interrogation and torture, Mark Jenson from AIT showed up to rescue them.
Rather than sending them to the hospital, Jenson called a doctor to the AIT office to check Lin Wei’s injuries. Lin Wei suspected that AIT was “trying to be discreet”
(338). When Lin Wei asked Jenson what punishments would the Garrison Command get, Jenson stated:
Of course we’ll make a report to the State Department […] But to be honest, there’s so much on our plate that I can’t see much happening after that […] The men who interrogated you will probably be reprimanded to save face, maybe be moved around, but I can’t see much more than that happening. I’m just being honest. (339)
Even when Lin Wei, an American citizen, fell victim to the malefactions done by the Chinese Nationalist government, the U.S. government could do little in intervention.
In Green Island, the newspapers which reported Jia Bao’s assassination provided interesting evidence for us to detect the distinct attitudes that different media held towards the assassination, which further shed light on the tacit alliance between the U.S. and ROC:
The Chinese-language papers in the United States put Jia Bao’s murder on the front page; in the local English-language news, his death
warranted nothing more than a brief note in the crime column. The newspapers in Taipei, of course, were silent. (289)
In 1979, Jia Bao ran away from the house arrest, leaving Taiwan for Berkeley, which caused a sensation in the Chinese American community in the United States. His assassination was thus reported in detail in the local Chinese-language papers. In the case of the English-language news, on account of the U.S.-Chinese Nationalist alliance, the news downplayed Jia Bao’s death and just mentioned it in passing. In Taiwan, any news about the assassination was blocked and forbidden because Taiwan was still under martial law and the Chinese Nationalist government clamped down on press freedom.
II. Writing to Work through the Trauma
In Writing History, Writing Trauma (2001), Dominick LaCapra took the concepts of “acting out” and “working through” from Freud, developed the two terms, and applied them to historical studies. In LaCapra’s view, “acting out is related to repetition, and even the repetition compulsion—the tendency to repeat something compulsively” (142). It is as if one was “haunted or possessed by the past and
performatively caught up in the compulsive repetition of traumatic scenes—scenes in which the past returns and the future is blocked or fatalistically caught up in a
melancholic feedback loop” (21). LaCapra further elucidated that, in the process of acting out, one relived the past and seemed to be caught in the past “with no distance from it” (143). To those who act out the traumatic experience, the distinction between past and present is blurred. “Working through,” as LaCapra recounted, could then be regarded as a countervailing force which “counteracts the force of acting out and the repetition compulsion” (22). LaCapra explicated that via “working through” “one is able to distinguish between past and present and to recall in memory that something happened to one (or one’s people) back then while realizing that one is living here and now with openings to the future” (22). Here LaCapra foregrounded the future-
orientation of trauma. Only through “working through” can a person free himself or herself from the past, start to review the past from a “critical distance” (143), and engage in the present life.
LaCapra’s interpretations of “acting out” and “working through” are helpful in my analysis of the characters’ experiences with trauma in Green Island. For example, Ryan vividly portrayed how Li Min, the narrator’s mother, “acted out” her traumatic experience:
Baba [Dr. Tsai] threw open the door. Three men. Mama [Li Min] would recall three men clustered at the door, their dark figures blocking the faint morning light, and when she could talk about it again, she would note the same thing over and over: “They were so young. Just boys.” Boys who tackled my father at his first words and dragged him away as my mother stuttered her protest. (26)
At the moment when Dr. Tsai was arrested and dragged away, Lin Min was
