Exploring Taiwan with Miss Chizuru: The Fictional Craft of Taiwan Travelogue

Date: February 20, 2025
Time: 3:30–4:50pm
Location: Harold Frank Hall 1104

Description:
How can a Taiwanese novel incorporate historical materials from its decades under
Japanese colonial rule? How does two women’s travelogue become a work of fiction?
This talk will examine Taiwan Travelogue’s use of a “Shōwa Taiwan Railway
Gourmet Tour” as its storytelling framework, covering the novel’s early inspirations,
conceptual development, research, fieldwork, archives-building, story conception, and
writing process.

How can historical documents from the Japanese colonial period be material for novel
writing? How do women’s travels in history become the subject of fictional
storytelling? Using Taiwan Travelogue as an example, this lecture will cover the
journey of creating the “Shōwa period Taiwan Railway Gourmet Tour,” from initial
inspiration, concept development, research, and fieldwork to organization, story
structure, and the final writing process.

The Author: Yáng Shuang-zi
Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, whose real name is Yang Jo-Tzu, is a versatile writer from Taichung,
Taiwan. She dabbles in various forms, including fiction, essays, manga scripts, and
literary criticism.

In 2020, she was named one of the Rising Stars of the Twenty-First Century by
Wenshun magazine and was selected by Unitas magazine as one of the Twenty Most
Promising Young Novelists. In 2021, she became the youngest-ever nominee for the
United Daily News Literary Award. In 2022, Wenshun magazine again recognized
Yáng as a Representative Author of Twenty-First Century Taiwanese Popular
Literature.

Her notable works include the novel The Season When Flowers Bloom (花開時節) in
2017, the short story collection Blossoming Girls of Gorgeous Island (花開少女華麗
島) in 2018, and the novel Taiwan Travelogue (臺灣漫遊錄) in 2020. Taiwan
Travelogue received Taiwan’s highest literary honor—the Golden Tripod Award. In
2024, its Japanese translation won Japan’s Best Translation Award, while the English
version earned the National Book Award for Translated Literature in the United
States.