by Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo credit: Chun-Hung Eric Cheng/Flickr/CC BY 2.0
SYAMAN RAPONGAN’S Eyes of the Ocean proves a rare opportunity to glimpse the accomplished Taiwanese Indigenous writer’s work in English. In this sense, Eyes of the Ocean is one of the rare works of Taiwanese Indigenous literature translated into English to date.
Eyes of the Ocean serves as an engaging introduction not only to Syaman Rapongan’s writing but also to Taiwanese Indigenous politics. The book, as characterized by anthropologist Scott Simon in the introduction, is autoethnography but it is also an autobiography in many ways.
In particular, Eyes of the Ocean is something of a bildungsroman, starting from Syaman Rapongan’s life as a young man on what is now known as Lanyu or Orchid Island–but which is known as Pongso no Tao to its Indigenous inhabitants, the Tao. Syaman Rapongan relates the changes that the island undergoes in his youth, with the influences of Western missionaries and the KMT’s military rule.
He is, then, among the first generation of Tao to travel to the Taiwanese mainland for education, keenly aware that he can work and send money back home to his family, and wanting to keep pace with the changing times. Yet he is also conscious of how others in Tao society sometimes view those who leave home for education among ethnic Han society as traitors.
Syaman Rapongan describes both the experiences of discrimination he experiences in Taiwanese society, as well as how the parameters of his world expanded–coming to understand the differences in Taiwanese Han society, as well as meeting Indigenous from other groups that hail from different parts of Taiwan. Deciding not to accept placement in National Taiwan Normal University through preferential testing scores, he sets adrift and studies for several years to place into the French Department at Tamkang University, working construction to support himself during this period. It is here that the book leaps forward into Syaman Rapongan’s late adulthood, as the fulfillment of the narrative arc of his life.
Eyes of the Ocean differs from Syaman Rapongan’s other work, which has sometimes adopted a non-human perspective, in focusing primarily on his autobiographical experiences. The most engaging parts of the narrative are arguably the early parts, in which Syaman Rapongan’s worldview is not as settled as a child. A social realist frame, as well as increasing density of allusions, creep into the narrative as it progresses–perhaps reenacting the transformations in the world that Syaman Rapongan observed in the narrative itself.
Eyes of the Ocean benefits from a fluid and clear translation by Darryl Sterk, though some stylistic choices are odd. For example, the term “Montagnard” is used rather than “Mountain Compatriots”–as the social designation for Indigenous was by Han society in the years that Syaman Rapongan writes on–even though those familiar with writing on Taiwan in English would be more accustomed to the latter term than the former.
Either way, with Syaman Rapongan’s work now available in English, it is work that demands reading. Minor hiccups aside, the book is not only enjoyable, but illuminating and beautiful.