Posts featuring Chung Wenyin

What’s New with the Crew? (Aug 2021)

In addition to editing your favorite literary journal, Asymptote staff are publishing books and winning awards!

After organizing a #GraphPoem computational poetry event that attracted hundreds of participants and thousands of viewers at DHSI 2021, Chris Tanasescu aka MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large for Romania and Moldova, is in the process of collaboratively starting a Digital Literature Lab at the Royal Library of Belgium on a FED-tWIN grant involving Université catholique de Louvain.

Chinese Social Media Manager Jiaoyang Li has received a China-Scotland Digital Collaboration Grant from the British Council and the City Artist Corps Grant from New York Foundation for the Arts to work on a series of community based literary events and workshops.

Assistant Director of Outreach Ka Man Chung’s English translation of Over the Left Bank of the River by Chung Wenyin has been awarded a translation and publication grant by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture. The work is expected to be released by Serenity International in 2022.

Educational Arm Assistant Katarzyna Bartoszyńska’s new book Estranging the Novel: Poland, Ireland, and Theories of World Literature has just been published this month by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Director of the Educational Arm Kent Kosack has a new short craft essay on the retrospective narration in J.D. Salinger’s “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period” up at Fiction Writers Review.

Assistant Editor (Poetry) M.L. Martin’s collection of ekphrastic prose poems, Theater of No Mistakes, won the 2021 Rick Campbell Chapbook Award, and will be published later this year with Anhinga Press (USA). In addition, her anti-translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem by the anonymous, pre-10th c. proto-feminist, Wulf & Eadwacer, was named a finalist for CSU’s 2021 Lighthouse Poetry Series (USA). READ MORE…

Recovering What Is Missing: In Conversation with C.J. Anderson-Wu

The collective denial of victimhood is the reason why dictatorship lasts, the far-right exists, and inequality prevails.

Chieh-Jane Anderson-Wu (吳介禎) is a Taiwanese author, translator, and publisher of Taiwanese literature in translation. She is partly inspired by the white spots of Taiwan’s recent history, namely the White Terror, a forty-year period of martial law which began in 1949 and witnessed systematic repression within the nation, particularly targeting intellectuals. Pervasive censorship during the White Terror affected literature, but also the lives of many families at a time when secrecy and denial turned into a survival strategy for many. Anderson-Wu has written several works, including the story collection Impossible to Swallow and “Life Looked at From A Single Window,” and is currently working on a new novel.

Filip Noubel (FN): Today Taiwan is one of the freest societies in Asia, yet martial law only ended in 1987, almost forty years after it was first imposed. This period, known as the White Terror, witnessed tremendous political violence: over one hundred and fifty thousand people, including many intellectuals, were arrested, and several thousands were executed. It is also the theme of your collection of short stories called Impossible to Swallow. What has led you to find inspiration in this particular period of Taiwan’s history?

C.J. Anderson-Wu (C.J. A-W): There are several causes, but one of them is my sense of guilt. I did not understand it until I had written several stories. After the Formorsa Incident in 1979, posters of the so-called rebels were everywhere. I was a kid and really believed that they were bad people, that they should be arrested and put in jail. Years went by and as more historical materials were released after the abolishment of martial law, I gradually realized what lies we had lived in. I feel so grateful to those who never backed down and sacrificed so much for the freedom we are enjoying today, and resent my gullibility.

Another thing is that we never had transitional justice. We never had a Nuremberg Trial-type that conducted thorough investigation on what had really happened, why it happened, and who should be responsible. Thus we don’t know how we can prevent it from happening again. Today the past dictators are still worshipped, the days under authoritarian rules are still commemorated, and lies are still believed. I was shocked, in despair, and infuriated. How can people stay ignorant when all the evidence is presented in front of their eyes? How can people feel okay sacrificing the rights that were earned by blood, tears, and sweat?

READ MORE…