Hunter School, by Sakinu Ahronglong (tr. Darryl Sterk)

I started reading Sakinu Ahronglong's Hunter School (1998; tr. Darryl Sterk; Honford Star, 2020) on the train down to D.C., then finished it upon returning to Boston. I had ordered it after reading a review by Michael Cannings. Originally published in Chinese under the title 【山豬．飛鼠．撒可努】(Mountain Boar, Flying Squirrel, Sakinu) in 1998, the book is a series of vignettes based on Ahronglong's life as a member of the Indigenous Paiwan ethnic group in Taiwan. A movie was made in 2005 that is based on the book:

I haven't watched the movie yet--guess that's my next project. But the book, a relatively short 162 pages, is definitely worth reading if you are interested in getting a personal perspective on the relationship of traditional Indigenous culture under Han domination in contemporary Taiwan. In his review, Cannings writes that 

[a] sense of loss permeates the book – loss of culture, loss of habitat, loss of language. The writing itself feels like an act of defiance against an encroaching world that has already taken much of what Sakinu considers to be the essential nature of the Paiwan people.

I agree that loss and the need to negotiate Paiwan identity with outside domination are important themes of Hunter School. This shows up in the chapter, "My Name is Paiwan," where Ahronglong struggles to arrange a traditional Paiwanese wedding in the face of his father's resistance (due to his Christian beliefs) and the challenges involved in restoring long-forgotten wedding customs. One thing that surprised me was how his community had adopted cultural practices from the Amis, another Indigenous group in Taiwan, causing them to lose their knowledge of some aspects of Paiwan culture. At one point during the wedding when everyone was dancing, he had to remind his guests that it was a Paiwan wedding, not an Amis wedding, because people were dancing in Amis style. 

But the book is also hopeful, particularly toward the end where Ahronglong writes about the restoration of his village's harvest festival, where he "sang with a voice like a mountain," and "we danced our way to the realization that what was lost can be found again, that it is an unchangeable fact that we are Paiwan."

There are some parts of this book that I think would work well in my courses. In my first-year writing course, in which we focus on literacy narratives, there are several places where Ahronglong writes of his acquisition of various types of literacy in the outdoors, learning from his father about how to read the forest and its animals, or learning from his grandfather about how to communicate with the birds in his millet field. The chapter about the frightening visit Ahronglong and his younger brother had in Taipei to find his father would work, perhaps, in my travel writing class (next time I get to teach it!). In both cases, I'd have to give students some background information to help them understand the texts, but that would be good for me, too--it would require me to learn more about Taiwan's Indigenous people and articulate that knowledge. This book is definitely a good place to start.