On Aug. 30 last year, the halls of the National Taiwan Museum in Taipei were flooded by a sea of color and the sound of many languages speaking at once. The mood was light and the crowd diverse, with a variety of clothing on display, from the elegant, ankle-length ao dai of Vietnam to the Muslim hijab, which can take many forms but is often a headscarf or veil. The visitors to the museum had gathered to attend the second annual Taiwan Literature Award for Migrants. “Anyone who could utter a word of welcome in a Southeast Asian language—whether the Thai sawadee ka or the Indonesian apa kabar—was welcome to take part,” says Chang Cheng (張正), organizer of the award and co-founder of Brilliant Time, a bookstore in New Taipei City that focuses on Southeast Asian-language publications.
When the first Taiwan Literature Award for Migrants took place in 2014, Brilliant Time was still an online forum designed to facilitate discussions about the well-being of migrants from Southeast Asia. Now Chang, who majored in Southeast Asian studies at university, uses the bookstore as a base of operations to further his efforts to help migrants find their place in Taiwanese society, and to help native residents better understand the cultures of their new neighbors. The annual award is the most ambitious of Chang’s efforts to spread cultural awareness, and has gained the support of the Ministry of Culture. The government body earmarked NT$700,000 (US$21,540) to help fund the award in each of the past two years, and will do so again for the third edition.
Le Hoang-Hiep stands on a pile of shells on a beach in Changhua County, central Taiwan. His prizewinning work The Dream explores the motivations and ambitions of migrant workers. (Photo by Chuang Kung-ju)
Submissions for the annual accolade are not restricted in terms of form or genre. Competitors come from among the more than 500,000 Southeast Asian migrants who reside in Taiwan. Some came to the country for marriage, but the majority are here because of the economic opportunities that it affords.
In last year’s iteration of the literature award, nearly 200 pieces were submitted in Indonesian, Filipino, Thai and Vietnamese. Outstanding works were chosen by a team of native speakers of Southeast Asian languages and then translated into Chinese. The works were subsequently reviewed by two groups of judges, namely the standard jury made up of native Taiwanese and the juvenile jury consisting of migrants’ children.
Dwiita Vita, from Indonesia, took the NT$100,000 (US$3,080) First Prize for The Portrait Behind the Formosan Frame. Employed as a domestic caregiver in Taiwan, Vita says she studied information engineering at university, but had to drop out and find a job to pay her bills. When the company she was working for went bankrupt, partly due to her country’s poor economy, she was forced to leave her young child behind and come to Taiwan to work. Meanwhile, her husband, who remained in Indonesia, fell in love with another woman. Vita decided to end the marriage and raise her child on her own.
The inability to find work or earn sufficient wages at home is what drives many foreign workers to come to Taiwan, but some people’s experiences turn out to be different from their expectations. In Vita’s The Portrait Behind the Formosan Frame, she writes about some of the unfortunate realities that migrants sometimes encounter—being cheated by their employers or forced to work long hours as well as issues connected to days off, biases toward religious practices and exploitation by employment agents. “The problems workers face are systemic in nature and will require political and regulatory solutions. I write to get more people to confront these issues,” Vita says. She plans on using the prize money to establish a small library in her hometown in order to give neighborhood kids a chance to explore the world of literature. She also hopes to one day turn her experiences in Taiwan into a book so that she can realize her dream of becoming a professional writer.
Anan Srilawut, from Thailand, plays the khene, a woodwind instrument, in his dormitory room, which has been decorated with repurposed materials. He won a NT$20,000 Choice Award for the autobiographical The Treasure Chest of Friendship and Music. (Photo by Chuang Kung-ju)
There were two Vietnamese winners at last year’s award, Pham Hung-Hiep for Mother’s Game, which won the NT$80,000 (US$2,460) Jury Award, and Le Hoang-Hiep for The Dream. Pham’s work, written in poetic prose, tells of a mother who eagerly awaits her son’s return from living abroad. In The Dream, Le writes about the unrealized ambitions of migrant laborers. It is a poignant and sad look at foreign workers’ efforts to change their fates.
Pham was born in Hanoi in 1984. His work, Mother’s Game, is a feat of narrative virtuosity. The primary theme of the story is loneliness, a concept with which he is all too familiar. When his brother left home in 1997, Pham witnessed his mother’s grief and how she coped with his absence. In 2004, Pham left Vietnam to study in France and then later found his way to Taiwan. Two years ago, on a dark and rainy afternoon, he wrote his poetic meditation on his mother’s loneliness.
At present, Pham is a doctoral student of management at Chinese Culture University in Taipei. Separated from his family, Pham longs to finish his studies so that he can end his own loneliness and be reunited with his wife and child. At some point in the future he hopes to publish a collection of his works. He intends to write a book of 20 vignettes on the lives of contemporary Vietnamese youth.
Le was awarded one of the four NT$20,000 (US$615) Juvenile Jury Awards for his work The Dream, which he wrote under the pen name Co Lam. Although he studied electrical engineering, he has a strong interest in writing. When asked how he gathers material, Le says that he sometimes translates or interprets for Vietnamese women who have come to Taiwan as foreign workers. He records their stories and hopes to imitate his favorite author Nguyen Ngoc-Tu, whose works were once banned in Vietnam due to their focus on social issues such as disparities of wealth. “I believe that drawing attention to these stories can help improve the lives of foreign workers,” he adds.
Keyzia Chan, who hails from East Java, Indonesia, also won a Juvenile Jury Award last year for her story Win, which tells the tale of a foreign laborer fleeing her place of employment. The compelling work features an ambiguous ending that leaves a lot to readers’ imaginations. She has since joined the Forum Lingkar Pena, an Indonesian writers’ association, and shares her works online. She says foreign laborers who abscond from their employers usually have a good reason to do so. In her pieces, she endeavors to describe these motives, and the emotional journey the employees go through while deciding whether to flee.
Indonesian Keyzia Chan attends class in Taipei on one of her days off. Chan is the author of Win, which took home a Juvenile Jury award last year. (Photo by Chuang Kung-ju)
Chan has long been looking to further her education. With the blessing of her employer, she registered for management classes at Indonesia’s Universitas Terbuka, which has facilities in Taipei. The coursework is not easy, and it is often hard for her to find time to study due to her job as a caregiver, but Chan is determined. “I hope that I can use the money I’ve earned at work and the knowledge I’ve learned in class to open my own coffee shop when I return to Indonesia,” she adds.
Thai writer Anan Srilawut received a NT$20,000 Choice Award for the autobiographical The Treasure Chest of Friendship and Music. Trained as a musician in Thailand, Anan operates a crane in Taiwan by day, and in his spare time creates moving compositions for the keyboard.
Anan says he came to Taiwan for work, and that he is grateful for the opportunity to make higher wages than he could in his home country. His family is using the money to build a house and pay for the education of his daughter, 19, and his son, 15. In his spare time he takes online classes offered by the Christian University of Thailand.
“I feel that I am a tree that has been uprooted and planted in a distant location,” reads a passage of Anan’s The Treasure Chest of Friendship and Music, the only winning work by a Thai writer in last year’s awards. “Getting accustomed to a new environment is hard. Fortunately, I have Taiwanese friends who look out for me,” he says.
Anan enjoys playing music and reading, and in 2012 he earned third place in a poetry competition for foreign workers sponsored by the Taipei City Government. When he heard about the call for submissions for the second annual Taiwan Literature Award for Migrants, he thought he could try writing his own story.
Multitalented Anan is proficient at various instruments, from guitar to keyboard. He also enthusiastically participates in a variety of public service activities, such as church-sponsored charity events and visits to inmates in prison. Anan says he hopes to one day form a musical group. He is currently trying his hand at composing music and writing lyrics. He says that the level of literacy among the residents of his hometown of Roi Et in northwestern Thailand is low, so he uses music to describe his life in Taiwan to his friends and family back home.
Dwiita Vita, also from Indonesia, was the top winner in the second annual edition of the migrant literature award. The prize has reawakened her dream of becoming a professional writer. (Photo by Chuang Kung-ju)
Since he moved to Taiwan, two members of his close family have passed away, but Anan has kept a positive outlook. When asked about how he deals with the difficulties in his life, Anan says, “I think about my two children. No matter how difficult things are, I’ve got to press on for them.”
Prospects for the Taiwan Literature Award for Migrants seem promising. Thanks to funds raised on the crowdfunding site FlyingV, Flow, a collection of 16 winning works from 2014 and 2015, was published last November and has led to more exposure for the event. Chen Fang-ming (陳芳明), jury convener for the first year of the awards, is optimistic about its future. “These awards are highly meaningful both in providing a platform for immigrant voices and in shaping the values and beliefs of native Taiwanese,” he says.
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A version of this article originally appeared in Taiwan Panorama.