cyh371@nyu.edu

The assigned readings this week enabled me to see fragments of the enslaved history of African Americans in an interesting way. Dana, the main character of the novel Kindred (1979) by Octavia Butler, time-travelled back to the 19th century Maryland, experienced all the traumatic events which Black slaves of that era were likely to undergo, and met her White ancestor Rufus, witnessing his growth from a boy to a man. I was moved especially by the conversations between Dana and Rufus: the hundreds-of-years gap between their cognition of the world brought about communication which will never be seen in the reality. I had a certain deep impression on Dana explaining how the word “nigger” is insulting while Rufus could not genuinely understand the underlying message of it until Dana exemplified by calling him “White trash”. This made me think of the callings which the officials in Taiwan have forcedly given the indigenous people of this island, Chinese officials in particular. The character similar to the discriminative meaning of “nigger” in Taiwanese Hokkien (originating from the Fujian Province in the 18th century and locally developing ever since) is “番/蕃 (the two characters can be used either one, both pronounced as ‘fan’)”, firstly called by the general Chinese authorities during Qing Dynasty. In Mandarin, this term can be simply indicated as the neutral adjective “foreign”; however, in Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka, this term delivered a sense of barbarian, which sometimes was utilized as a curse. It is somehow sarcastic to see this term from the modern view that Han Chinese, the real invaders of the island, were calling the native “foreign”. Nowadays, the Taiwan government legislated the formal calling of indigenous people as “原住民 (‘Yuan-Zhu-Min’, the original residents)” or this term in their own indigenous language, at a level returning these natives justice.

Notes of Unpayable Debt (still trying to understand):

Connections that exceed the limits of space-time (p.85)

One is not responsible for the existence of one’s ancestors… they are responsible for her existence. (p.85, p.86)

Unpayable debt – an obligation that one owns but is not one to pay. (p.87)