Tales from a Beautiful Island

Huang Chunming

Since his debut in the 1960s, Chunming has been considered the most important representative of Taiwan’s “nativist literature.” Focusing mainly on the lives of rural Taiwanese people, Huang’s work also explores the challenges rapid industrialization and modernization has brought to Taiwan. The Ilan native’s short stories have been translated into multiple languages and made into feature films. He also writes children’s books and directs a theater group in Ilan.

Howard Goldblatt

Goldblatt, an SF State alumnus and former faculty member in the Chinese Program, began studying Chinese in Taiwan after completing a tour of duty at a naval base on the island. He received a Ph.D. from Indiana University and is professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame. It is thanks to Goldblatt’s many translations of Taiwanese literature that Western readers have gained access to the island’s literature, including the work of Chunming first translated by Goldblatt in 1980 (The Drowning of an Old Cat and Other Stories, reissued in 2001). He is also the translator of the Chinese writer Mo Yan, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Sponsors

Co-sponsored by University of San Francisco’s Center for Asia Pacific Studies. Sponsorship also provided by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in San Francisco, SF State Chinese Flagship Program and San Francisco InterContinental. Additional support provided by SF State’s Confucius Institute, College of Liberal and Creative Arts, and Foreign Languages and Literatures Department. Media sponsor: KTSF.

Related event

Translating Greater China Into a Globalized World, November 6, University of San Francisco