Life Update / Rest in Peace Natalie Zemon Davis
Plus, replies to Esther’s guest essay, organic farming in Taiwan and Indonesia, and a new children’s book Hear our Voice
Dear all,
Albert here. It’s been a tough couple of months. We hit rock bottom in October. Like almost everybody, we’ve been horrified by the war in Gaza, feeling confused about how to speak to this moment. More than ever before, Michelle, who has six students from Israel, has found it difficult to navigate the classroom. On my side, I’ve been overwhelmed by administrative duties and talks that I agreed to a long time ago and that seemingly all came due at once.
It’s been two years since we left Paris for Taipei. We’re on Year Three! The anniversary sparked an intense bout of soul-searching. Many of the frustrations we felt in Paris have been resurfacing: we’ve found ourselves unable to say no, overworked and overcommitted. (Late at night, when Michelle can’t sleep, she Googles “how do you say no”?1) Michelle still faces the persistent question of purpose outside the U.S. (“It’s Year Three and I still can’t speak this effing language!”) And, at the heart of it all, we have little time for ourselves. One reason we moved here, besides my love for Taiwan and some family health issues, was to make time to read and write. And yet, though structurally everything has changed, we still don’t know how to carve out that space. Are we the problem?
A couple of recent moments have offered reprieve from the misery. Our friend Susan Southard, a mainstay in our book club—she’s missed just one session, because she couldn’t endure a second round of Milton—came to visit Taiwan, popping over between dates on a tour for the Japanese translation of her extraordinary book, Nagasaki. Michelle’s NCCU students cried after hearing Susan talk about her lasting connection to survivors of that bombing. For decades, many kept their exposure to radiation a secret, fearing rejection from marriage proposals or employment if it was revealed. For each of the five survivors whose story Susan documents, a seemingly small moment catapulted them into a lifetime of openness and advocacy. One man whose entire back was burned went to a beach party where all the other men were topless; at the urging of a close friend, he took his shirt off too. From that moment on he began to share, slowly becoming an anti-nuclear war activist. Another woman, who was sixteen when the bomb dropped, stayed home for nine years, embarrassed that she had no hair. But the hair started to grow back, giving her confidence to venture out of her home and, eventually, her town; she went to Tokyo to start a new career—unusual for a woman in the 1950s—and became a fashion executive.
We spent a weekend with Susan at our favorite place in the world, Taroko Gorge, discussing everything from Japanese history to veganism and indigenous conservation.
One other day that lifted our spirits was with Ade Nuriadin, a multi-talented Indonesian with a bright, easy smile. Ade is a filmmaker, a story-teller, and organic farmer who runs an NGO that promotes sustainable agriculture. Ade comes from the island of Sulawesi, which was hit by a 7.5 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in 2018, which killed more than 4300 people. Ade described to us what it was like to live through natural disaster, and how it inspired him to turn towards organic farming as a career: the earthquake revealed the extent to which bad farming practices had eroded the soil.
We met Ade through Taiwan AID, which sponsored ten NGO activists from south and southeast Asia to be embedded NGOs in Taiwan. Ade was placed with Island Time, an NGO founded by Lai Cing Soong (賴青松) that pioneered the organic farming movement in Yilan more than twenty years ago. Ade and Mr. Lai nerded out over how to make natural fertilizers. They lamented the lack of young people interested in farming. Mr. Lai told us about his latest obsessions—making sake with Taiwanese rice—and we tried some (delicious) that his mentee made. We also saw Ade help Sih-wei Jhang (章思偉) out on his farm. Mr. Jhang is a former social worker and Rural Front activist who turned to full-time organic farming about ten years ago. (If you are interested, you can order his organic rice from his Facebook page here.) Spending time with Ade, Mr. Lai, Mr. Jhang, and their friends made us think about the big questions: happiness, daily life, relationships forged from shared valuing of the earth.
We’re working on a longer piece related to the Rural Front and organic farming in Taiwan.
We also had the great fortune to attend the ten-year anniversary of the Teach for Taiwan exhibition at Huashan.
We’re working on a few more piece as well on the Taiwanese television show Port of Lies, Vanessa Hope’s Invisible Nation, the development of TaiwanPlus, and a review of《惡女》（Lost in Perfection）a new film by Sung Hsin-yin, who directed the lovely On Happiness Road. We shall have them to you soon!
RIP Natalie Zemon Davis
Last week the great historian Natalie Zemon Davis passed away. She was a hero of Albert’s and one of the main inspirations for his becoming a historian. Her body of work is so wide-ranging that it’s difficult to categorize, but we thought this obituary in the New York Times did it justice—she always had an eye for the marginalized, the outcast. She is best-known for The Return of Martin Guerre, but our favorites is an early article of hers, “Rites of Violence: Religious Violence in Sixteenth-Century France.” We wrote about teaching the article two years ago for our Substack. The idea for the article came from watching students occupy the University of Toronto’s administration building, demanding the university to create a daycare. Davis wrote in 2012:
I followed with a sinking heart: on the one hand, I cared deeply about means to increase and facilitate the presence of women in the university (women were still a small number in the graduate school and a very small presence on the faculty); on the other hand, I found the breach of order, the transgressive act, quite frightening. I also found it fascinating. The august Senate chamber became the scene for carnivalesque reversal; students took turns relaxing triumphantly in the ‘throne chair’.
She was a person of extraordinary curiosity and generosity. We will miss her. It was one of our joys that she often replied to our little newsletter, too. It’s hard for us to believe that we won’t get to hear her thoughts about our writing.
Response to Esther Kim’s piece
Thank you to everyone who replied or messaged us about Esther’s piece about the disorientation felt by Koreans and Korean Americans in Taiwan. It received delight and recognition from some readers and blowback from others. One of the main critiques was that the piece underplayed the complicated postwar trajectories of Taiwan and the different path it took from South Korea. South Korea became independent; Taiwan did not. It’s an important counter-argument. We recommend reading James Lin’s article, “ Nostalgia for Japanese colonialism: Historical memory and postcolonialism in contemporary Taiwan.” In it, James writes that
Nostalgia for Japanese colonialism in Taiwan emerged after the traumatic experiences of later Guomindang (KMT) authoritarian rule and the politics of democratization and decolonization that followed the end of Guomindang martial law. While some of this social memory is shaped by a generation who lived through Japanese rule, much of the reshaping of Taiwan's historical memory is more complex than merely “pro-colonialism.” Colonial nostalgia reflects a historical memory shaped by contemporary social experiences of trauma, counterhegemony, and postcolonial agency.
Still, we think Esther points to something aesthetically or visually unsettling about the history of Japanese colonialism in Taiwan, an absence of public reckoning. As our friend Wendy mentioned, reckoning can take multiple forms, among them a restorative vision that centers on the desires of local parties harmed. It doesn’t need to be the sort that is vengeful and vague, easily weaponized by national governments. We appreciate reader replies; these conversations only point to how how vital and sensitive these topics are.
Links for the week
Our dear friend Radhika Natarajan has written an amazing book for children and young adults! Hear our Voices, co-written with Chao Tayiana, is a retelling of the British Empire through twenty individual stories, from a Qing official who burned opium to a Jamaican who escaped slavery to lead the fight against the British. We hope to interview Radhika for a future issue of the newsletter.
Taiwan Pride was this Saturday. Our friend Ben Sahlmüller had a great collection of photos, and we hope to have him write a longer piece reflecting on the event and LGBTQ+ rights in Taiwan in the future.
To help us think through these horrific times, we’ve recommend the following pieces: Oded Na’aman’s piece in The Raven about his experiences as an IDF soldier; Adam Shatz in the LRB on the war in Gaza; an interview with David Myers at NPR; Nomi M. Stolzenberg’s piece on how to talk about Israel and Gaza; the podcast Speaking out of Place, hosted by David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji, which most recently highlighted Noura Erakat’s powerful speech at the Palestine Literature Festival.
And here are is our running list of upcoming events that might be of interest to you:
Until November 29: National Human Rights Film Fest, broadcasting across the whole country and even Kinmen Island. The open ceremony has just been held at SPOT Huashan Cinema Taipei.
Until November 12: World Press Photo will tour Yangming Mountain Taipei. A group of Dutch photographers created the foundation, based in Amsterdam.
Until November 25: A photography exhibit of migrant workers in Taiwan is on display in Taichung.
First and third weekends of November: An environmental group making bags from abandoned fishing nets collected from Penghu will run a stand at Pier2 Art Center in Kaohsiung.
Until November 21: An exhibit on Ukrainian women is being held at the National Human Rights Museum.
On November 17-18, the History Department at National Cheng-Kung University in Tainan is hosting an exciting conference on “More-than-human” histories. The conference lineup looks great!
And two final pictures:
Here’s a picture from a terrific anti-death penalty exhibit that showcases words and artwork of incarcerated people on death row in Taiwan. Today (Sunday, 11/5) is the last day if you still want to catch it. (Directions if you’re in Taipei: Go out of exit 3 of the Longshan MRT stop and turn immediately left to an alley. Walk down a few steps; you’ll see a light-filled space to your right.)
Halloween has become a major deal here in Taiwan. Even though it was exhausting, we also went trick-or-treating for Halloween with No-Longer-Baby-P. Kids lined up for Halloween candy at a stores in Taiwan. Our team of trick-or-treaters included an unnamed fairy princess, Wednesday Addams, Pikachu, and Carlos Alcaraz.
Google suggests that one begins the reply with: “Unfortunately …”
Sending you much love from Kyiv, and hoping you get the space to find rest and achieve your goals. Unfortunately, my schedule doesn't allow for a longer comment of solidarity ;)
Thanks for the mention, Albert! I’d recommend also the work of Leo Ching, especially Anti-Japan, for exploring the politics of colonial nostalgia from a postcolonial lens. He inspired the article I wrote, and complements Esther Kim’s brilliant essay. If anyone wants access to my article, feel free to message me here or email me.