Booker Prize winner Yang Shuang-tzu: 'I wanted to show Taiwan's diversity to the world'

"I wanted to win the International Booker Prize for Taiwan."

Yang Shuang-tzu, the first Taiwanese author to win the National Book Award in 2024 and this year's International Booker Prize, made the remark Sunday at a press conference at Space Aid in Jung-gu, Seoul.

South Korea was the first country she visited after winning the Booker Prize — and she used the occasion to emphasize Taiwan's distinct identity.

"As a literary scholar, both prizes are shared with a translator, so I believed in the abilities of my translator, Lin Kin, and felt we could win," Yang said. "Just as Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in Literature, I think the world is moving in the same thematic direction — giving voice to women's issues and to the violence states have inflicted on peoples through history."

"As a novelist, I wanted to use literature to show the world more of Taiwan's diverse dimensions at a time when Taiwan is under strong pressure in the international arena," she added. "Taiwan is an extraordinarily complex and diverse place."

Her work has centered on Taiwan's colonial period a century ago. Like South Korea, Taiwan endured Japanese colonial rule, but unlike Korea, which regained sovereignty after liberation, Taiwan then passed through 38 years of martial law under the Republic of China. It was not until 1996 that Taiwan held its first direct presidential election.

"I wanted to tell people living today that we have not truly left the colonial era behind," Yang said. Last year she helped organize a petition among Taiwanese writers calling for the removal of a lawmaker from office, but many participants were too afraid to come forward publicly. "That is the shadow of martial law," she said. She also cited the rise of China and the Kuomintang's shift toward a pro-Beijing stance as factors that have made Taiwan's situation increasingly complicated.

Reader responses to her work on colonial rule varied by country, she said. "In Japan, many readers reflected critically on colonialism. Korean readers identified with the colonized from the outset. British and American readers, accustomed to an imperialist perspective, showed little interest in the relationship between colonizers and the colonized and focused almost entirely on the romance."

Alongside history, women form the other central pillar of her writing. Her Booker Prize-winning novel, which weaves together history and female same-sex love, drew wide attention for that combination.

"From the perspective of a lesbian woman, I asked myself: are there enough stories about women in our society today? Are there enough stories that give young women imaginative space to envision their futures?" she said. "In '1938 Travel Diary of Taiwan,' the women had dreams, but those dreams were never recorded in history. I wanted to use literature to bring unrecorded lives to light." She added: "The power of literature lies in continuing the conversation, finding common ground, and passing that on to the next generation."

Her use of food and gastronomy as a literary motif draws on personal experience. She worked in the food service industry throughout her three years of high school to help support her family and held a job at a hotel during university. "I came to recognize the class distinctions embedded in gastronomic culture," she said. "Food is connected to ethnicity, gender and age — all of which involve power and hierarchy. Food cannot be separated from identity."

On Korean literature, she said: "K-drama series tend to feature a lot of sageuk, but the Korean literary works introduced in Taiwan are almost the opposite — nearly all contemporary fiction. There are many themes that resonate with Taiwan in terms of consciousness and identity: feminism, social wounds, the scars that states leave on their people. Korea also seems to produce many personal essays on small, everyday subjects."

Yang, who has kept a packed schedule since winning the Booker Prize, plans to publish two books by 2029. "One is nearly finished — a contemporary story that again centers on gastronomy and women as its protagonists. My goal is to wrap it up as soon as possible this year," she said. "After that, I plan to write a third historical novel. My first book, 'Blooming Season,' portrayed the school days of young women; '1938 Travel Diary of Taiwan' depicted women traveling. In the third novel, I want to focus on women's working lives."