Taiwan Literature: Special Issue on Animal Writing in Taiwan Literature

The works selected for translation here were recommended primarily by guest editor, Professor Chang. She has chosen works that highlight the local characteristics of animal literature in Taiwan as distinct from international animal literature. These works refer to the geographical environment and to memory of the unique cultural history of Taiwan. The two stories by Wu Ming-yi, “Koxing” and “The Compass of the Soul,” are excellent examples of this. Lee Chiao’s “A Sacrifice to the Asuras” was originally intended for the special issue on the author (No. 36, July 2015), but it turned out to be very appropriate for this issue on animal writing in Taiwan as it ponders animal life from a philosophical perspective.

• Kuo-ch'ing Tu, Editor

  Kuo-ch’ing Tu (b. 1941), graduated from National Taiwan University (1963) with a major in English literature. He received his MA in Japanese literature from Kwansei Gakuin University (1970) and his PhD in Chinese literature from Stanford University (1974). His research interests include Chinese literature, Chinese poetics and literary theories, comparative literature East and West, and world literatures of Chinese. He is the author of numerous books of poetry in Chinese, as well as translator of Baudelaire and T. S. Eliot into Chinese. He held the Lai Ho and Wu Cho-liu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies and was the Director of the Center for Taiwan Studies at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara, until he retired in March 2021. He has been co-editor of Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series since its initial publication in 1996. His recent publications include Shanhe lüeying [A Sweeping View of China’s Mountains and Rivers], Yuyan ji [The Jade Smoke Collection: Fifty Variations on Li Shangyin’s Songs of the Ornamented Zither], Shilun, shiping, shilunshi [Poetics, Poetic Critiques, and Poems of Poetics], and Taiwan wenxue yu Shi-Hua wenxue [Taiwan Literature and World Literatures of Chinese], Guang she chenfang yuanzhao wanxiang [Light Shines Through the World of Dust, Illuminating the Myriad Objects], and Tui chuang wang yue [Pushing Open the Window, Gazing at the Moon: Collected Essays by Tu Kuo-ch’ing]."

• Terence Russell, Editor

  Terence Russell (b. 1950) received his PhD in Classical Chinese from Australian National University in 1984. He is Senior Scholar in the Asian Studies Centre at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. His early research interest was in medieval Taoist literature, but for the past twenty years he has focused on contemporary Taiwan literature, publishing numerous translations and studies, including a rendering of the full-length novel The Soul of Jade Mountain by Indigenous author Husluman Vava (Cambria, 2020). Since 2014, he has been English language editor of Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series.