Reviews
"A beautifully written book that foregrounds oral histories/biographies of Taiwanese students who engaged in activism and contextualizes their lives and experiences through infrastructures of activism and surveillance."—Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, author of Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era
"The stories and political intrigue that fill the book's pages are fascinating. I have been waiting for a long time for a book like Island X that covers Taiwanese American activism."—Carolyn Chen, author of Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience
"A fascinating, lively account of the Taiwanese diaspora's surprising influence on America—and America's furtive investment in their fates, as well."—Hua Hsu, author of Stay True: A Memoir
"What a beautiful book. Wendy Cheng patiently pieced together a fragile archive to reconstruct this story about Taiwanese immigrant student activism in the US, military dictatorship, espionage, and processes of identity formation. In subtle and supple prose, Island X explores little-known radicalism as it emerged and, as she argues, resonated with Black Radical and other internationalist traditions in the brutal Cold War context. Narratively intimate and theoretically daring, it will be read and taught by all curious about these complexities."—Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation
"A tour de force and powerful in its invocation of memory, human rights, and transnational justice, Wendy Cheng makes clear why we need to look at the Taiwan question within Asian/American studies as part of Cold War global history. Island X is a major contribution to Asian American studies, American studies, and Taiwan studies."—Chih-ming Wang, author of Transpacific Articulations: Study Abroad and the Remaking of Asian America
"[E]ssential readingIsland X offers so many things at once to the Taiwanese American canon and political education, recovering what was discounted and articulating what continues to be murky, without the self-consciousness of a memoir or the distance of an outsider-observer. It is a labor of deep, lasting love from a daughter who brings honor to her radical parents' legacy and hope to her children's future."—TaiwaneseAmerican.org
