Author ｜
Shih-yun Lo
Abstract ｜
Since the 1970s, Taiwan’s postwar generations have initiated a wave of return to realism and localism, propelling national historical narratives and identity formation into a phase of cultural reconstruction. Memory is not only a skill but also a form of power—self-identity is often founded on the construction and representation of memories of childhood, family, homeland, and ethnicity, and is always produced through the responses and recognition of others, imbuing memory with both creative and mobilizing potentials. Against this backdrop, this paper examines nostalgic essays written in the 1980s by Xiao Min (1929-2007), a female writer who came to Taiwan from China after the war. It focuses on her narratives of childhood and adolescent experiences, as well as local memories of the Republican era, and further explores how her nostalgic writing rearticulates the lyrical expression and interpretive paradigms of diasporic literature. Structurally, this study investigates various dimensions—including memories of growth, lived landscapes, and narrative techniques—in conjunction with the social and cultural characteristics of Taiwanese society in the 1970s and 1980s. Accordingly, this paper analyzes the Republican-era childhood memories depicted in Xiao Min’s essays to uncover the narrative paradigms and affective mobilization of the wartime generation who migrated from China to Taiwan. Beyond excavating the relatively overlooked memories associated with experiences away from the front lines and those seen through the eyes of children, this paper also traces how literary texts, as media of memory, constructed systems of meaning around Republican-era local memories in 1980s Taiwan. In addition, it explores why writers of that period adopted visually rich nostalgic narratives to engage in historical dialogue with the era.
keywords ｜
Xiao Min, Republican memory in Taiwan, childhood memories, nostalgia, landscape