Leona Chen

Leona Chen is the firstborn of parents raised under martial law in Taiwan, and a great-granddaughter of the aboriginal Ketagalan tribe's last standing chief.

TAIWANESEAMERICAN.ORG

Editor-in-Chief / taiwaneseamerican.org

TaiwaneseAmerican.org was a huge influence on my adolescence, filling my life with Taiwanese American narratives and role models across industries and pursuits, especially literature. I’m so honored to be on the masthead now to continue facilitating storytelling and dream-sharing among Taiwanese Americans.

TAIWANESE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

Vice President of the Board / tafnc.org

I’m grateful to serve first-generation Taiwanese Americans and continue their profound work of raising awareness for Taiwan’s meaningful contributions to the world and of building safe, supportive, well-connected networks for the Taiwanese diaspora.

taiwanese american foundation

Incoming Parents Program Director /tafworld.org

I’m passionate about Taiwanese American parents - mine and yours! After serving two years as a Youth Advisor, I’m pleased to join the TAF Summer Conference as a Parents Program Director, focusing on developing a toolkit of vocabulary, frameworks, and habits to facilitate intergenerational communication, trust, and empathy.

Wendy Cheng’s “ISLAND X” is essential reading for Taiwanese Americans

Island X also offers timely analysis of some baffling contradictions within our community: our intuitive solidarity with the repressed, who do not elect their harmful leaders; our strange romanticization of and continued reliance on the United States government (who not only funded the 228 massacre under the Kuomintang government but allowed them to spy on and intimidate Taiwanese students on American college campuses); our few progressive allies and advocates despite becoming a progressive nation. Perhaps the biggest takeaway here is that once the constraints that prevented our grandparents and parents from developing a sustained critique of the United States are illuminated — we their children can build upon their work, stand upon their shoulders, and continue to reach for a political articulation that leaves no one behind. If “Taiwanese American identity should be understood as merging from a specific dialectical and semi-colonial relationship between Taiwan and the United States,” may we as Taiwanese Americans dedicate our politics to accountability for both.

S. Leo Chiang’s ISLAND IN BETWEEN: Observations of Kinmen and Liminality

I’d come to the island expecting one story, he shared with us. But instead, the real, lived experiences of Kinmen offer a different kind of thesis. ISLAND IN BETWEEN is not really a documentary about the Taiwanese people’s fight for freedom or the looming possibility of war.

Rather, it is about the furtive life they’ve made in the gulf between peace and invasion, the everyday life that carries on when neither are guaranteed. This margin of tranquility and tension – where the residents are largely safe but military drills occur daily – resonated with Chiang as a transnational navigating Taiwanese, American, and Chinese spaces in his personal and professional life.

taiwanese american foundation

Vanessa Hope’s INVISIBLE NATION: “China does not want the world to know our story.”

I found the most striking triumph of this documentary to be its commitment to balance. By “balance,” I don’t mean that the power differences between Taiwan and China were neutralized, or that the film sought to present any sort of false equivalence. I mean that there was a careful blend of Taiwanese voices to speak on behalf of Taiwan and well-informed commentary to demonstrate that Taiwan is not “just a Taiwanese concern.” For every example that the Chinese Communist Party is a credible, urgent threat, there was a compelling reason for Taiwan to be worthy of concern and defense. “Invisible Nation” does not lionize Tsai or sensationalize Taiwan, but efficiently captures how both have, under duress of absurd and hostile circumstances, become extraordinarily creative and resilient.

On Clubhouse, ‘臺kanda’:

Taiwan’s Wakanda Fantasies

Taiwan is not a fictionalized Marvel universe, and so in praxis can only achieve this liberation through meaningful redress of its past abuses. And, by existing in the real world, she has proven that this is an extraordinarily difficult task. To start, the political conditions of contemporary Taiwan tether her to the Republic of China. Decolonial work tries to restore a history that doesn’t only overlap with Chinese history, inclusive of – but not limited to – indigenous history by incorporating the legacies of Dutch and Spanish colonialism. To admit to more conquerors is to be more faithful to the facts: Taiwanese history on Taiwanese terms, delineated by Taiwanese geography. And so part of Taiwanese liberation becomes necessarily counterintuitive; these concessions serve to complete an autobiography beyond the ROC narrative.

I DREAM OF POPO is the Taiwanese American story of all generations

For the parent who has chosen distance by way of emigration, and suffers daily its incalculable griefs and sacrifices. I think of mothers and fathers reading this to their young children, missing their own parents in Taiwan, touched that despite it all – physical, linguistic, cultural barriers – the relationship between a grandchild and grandparent somehow prevails. That their particular love and tenderness somehow transcend the difficult circumstances. I hope this anchors every first-generation immigrant in a sense of belonging: no matter how suspended they may feel between two worlds, there is someone on either side that loves them.

WHAT TAIWANESE AMERICANS CAN LEARN FROM TAIWANESE POLITICS

Taiwanese Americans, our cousins overseas are more alike us than we think. Whatever languages or politics we share or don’t, know that they, too, are confronting generational differences at the ballot, chipping away at an older, conservative, and fearful hegemony. Just take a look at how comparisons between United States president Donald Trump and Kaohsiung mayor-elect Han Guo-yu challenge us to recognize resentment and fear in its powerful, loud forms. How the racialized identity politics dominating American discourse dissolve when every candidate looks like family. How we can extend our Thanksgiving consciousness of indigenous Americans to indigenous Taiwanese tribes also fighting for lands, rights, and recognition.