RECONSTRUCT THE IDENTITIES ON CULTURAL AND LANGUAGE TRANSITION IN TAIWAN

Abstract

Since 1980s, the marriage pattern in Taiwan has had a huge change for a large number of female immigrants both from Southeast Asia and Mainland China started to immigrate to Taiwan. It is called “Marriage Migration.” Researches concerning female immigrant spouses’ homeland cultures and familial identities were seldom discussed; however, it is till recent years that the stories of those female immigrants were fully presented/ represented by means of various narratives. For instance, many films, photos, and the contexts exquisitely depict conflicts between female immigrants and their cross-cultural marriages, families, children and even their families of origin. There are three kinds of narratives in immigrants’ writing: oral/confessional narrative, textual narrative, and documentary films. The first is based on female immigrants’ description orally with their own languages and then being translated into Chinese, or they write with simple Chinese. For example, the Taiwanese female artist, Lulu Shur-tzy Hou, played as a medium in depicting seven female immigrant spouses by means of the firstperson monologue in her three episodes Look Toward the Other Side: Song of Asian Foreign Brides in Taiwan (2005-2009). These episodes probed into the question of spouses’ self-identity whilst living in an exotic place. Then, the Textual narrative tends to focus on the mother-daughter relationships and Pepe Wu’s three short stories in Moving Skirts will be discussed. It usually illustrates the mother figures with madness, aphasia, or also absence from home. All mothers are silent without voices. Finally, in the documentary films, Out/Marriage and Let’s not be Afraid display that women not only play as mothers, wives, daughter-in-laws, but as a defenders to protect their rights. This research will explore the following issues in female immigrants from Southeast Asia in Taiwan: (1) cultural and National identities; (2) motherhood and the mother-daughter relationships; (3) narrative writing. It will definitely provide a new perspective in Asian ethic and women’s writing and set up a landmark toward research possibilities of diasporic females studied by the approaches of displacement.