Woohoo! I had the privilege of being on the Taiwanese Diaspora Podcast hosted by Cynthia Lin. It was a great experience to be able to talk about my experience with learning Taiwanese, my relationship with Taiwanese heritage as a bi-racial person, and to talk about disability. As a bi-racial person, I often feel like an imposter, especially when navigating through spaces that are marked for a seemingly mono-racial ethnic identity, culture, or race. I was really happy to have the opportunity to talk with Cynthia on the podcast. In the last few years, I have been working on improving my own perception of my personal identity (which includes a lot of different elements). I thought it was important to be apart of "a Taiwanese Space" like this before starting to really go into learning Taiwanese because I felt like I needed to establish myself as a Taiwanese person first, or at least Taiwanese enough.
The goal of being on this podcast was to start the reciprocal process, and nature, of this project. I want to make sure that I am centering the Taiwanese, Taiwanese American, and broader Taiwanese Diaspora in this project. Reciprocity is a core goal of this project. I want to allow folks to see the process from the start. Language learning is so rich and has a lot to do with culture, food, etc. I want to make sure I am doing this culture (my culture) justice and not having a close-minded view or perception of what the Taiwanese Diaspora looks like. Growing up, I used to think that Taiwanese folks were mostly elders; however, when thinking about how I define Taiwanese now, I think of the younger generation of folks who are looking at themselves as part of a different generation of folks. I think it's important to broadly define this notion and to move forward in my broader language-learning journey.
One part of this podcast experience that I was not really expecting as much was how this podcast episode provided a chance for me to speak to my family about "what I do" in school, but also about my own identity and perceptions. I had the surprisingly opportunity to talk to my family about how I felt about this project and ultimately why I decided to work on Taiwanese language as my project topic. It was a special expiernece all in all, both working with Cynthia and having the opportunity to process and reflect with my family. If you have the time, consider listening to the episode (it's kind of long)! I also have a transcript for accessibility purposes, and I would be more than willing to share.
平安
---朱自立
