Some notes on Yang Tsui's (楊翠) 《永不放棄：楊逵的抵抗、勞動與寫作》

楊翠, 《永不放棄：楊逵的抵抗、勞動與寫作》，蔚藍文化， 2016。 Yang Tsui, Never Give Up: Yang Kui's Resistance, Labor, and Writing. Azure Books, 2016.

I finished reading this book on April 3 (I always write the date that I finished a book on the cover page, just to remind myself). Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to write or even think about it because of end-of-the-semester grading that I'm buried in. I'll try now to write down some notes on some of the points from the book that stood out for me. This will be very impressionistic for now; perhaps I'll come back to some of these in some later posts if there's interest. 

In more-or less chronological order, here's some of what I remember from the book without looking at it (this is a good exercise, by the way):

• Yang Kui's idea of countering Japanese “history” with his own writing;
• The variety of genres he worked in, including some that it seems he invented (I’m thinking here of his 報告文學 (literary reportage) and 街頭劇 (street performance/plays), etc.);
• His arguments during the early postwar years (before he went to prison in Green Island) with mainlanders (Yang Tsui calls them "authors who came from China" [中國來台作家]) who dismissed the idea of a “Taiwanese” literature;
• His friendships with other mainlanders, like the philosopher Xu Fuguan (徐復觀) and the novelist Chiang Kuei (姜貴), who visited Yang at his Tunghai Garden, where he lived after he got out of prison;
• His relationship with his wife Ye Tao (葉陶) and his granddaughter Yang Tsui (and how Yang Tsui writes about their relationship);
• His insistence on sticking on principles, even when at times it plunged his family (even deeper) into poverty; 
• The writing and editing work he did in prison on Green Island

My initial reaction to Yang Tsui's portrayal of Yang Kui's incarceration on Green Island--the earlier parts of her depiction of his writing and publishing in the prison's poster-newspaper (壁報) New Life (新生活), his writing and production of plays, etc.-- was that not only was his time in prison very productive for him, but that it was arguably pretty enjoyable. He didn’t have to worry about family responsibilities, for instance, and could focus on creative work. Yang Tsui also mentions times when Ye Tao and their second son Yang Jian (楊建) were able to visit him for up to half a month. 

But then after reading through all that and thinking that Green Island wasn’t so bad, I was brought up short by Yang Tsui's description of the difficulties his family experienced during that time--the trouble they had keeping body and soul together (exacerbated by Yang’s requests--even demands--for money to buy him medicine), for instance, and the social stigma of having a husband/father in prison. On Yang’s side of things, he tried to communicate with his family through letters, but there was a limit to how much he was allowed to write (300 characters per letter) , so evidently a lot of letters didn’t get sent. In fact, at one point he was punished by not being allowed to write anything to his family for three months (p. 216). Yang Tsui describes his letters to his family, which appear to have been kept in his "New Life Notebooks" (新生筆記簿), as him trying to be a father by instructing his children. Yang Tsui characterizes him as a "Green Island Teacher Chang" (綠島張老師; "Teacher Chang" is an organization in Taiwan devoted to youth counseling).

I found myself wanting to know more about Ye Tao, who is portrayed--during the Japanese period in particular--as being a more outgoing and vocal person than Yang, one who gave speeches and taught, while Yang was more a quiet writerly type of person. She kind of disappears into the background later on, always standing behind him and taking on a supporting role, though it’s clear that she tried to hold the family together while he was in prison. 

After Ye Tao died when Yang and his family had been living at Tunghai Garden, his children all moved away to have their own lives. For some reason, they allowed Yang Kui to take care of his young granddaughter Yang Tsui, something that she doesn’t seem to have enjoyed (though she blames herself as much as she blames him for the troubles they had). Later in life, when she was in college, she wanted to help him write his biography (she was majoring in history at Fu Jen University at the time), but seemed not to be able to get to that when he was alive. 

I enjoyed reading about the life of Yang Kui from the point of view of his granddaughter. I'm not sure how I'd characterize this book--perhaps part biography, part memoir. Yang Tsui spent much of her childhood living with her grandfather at his 東海花園 (Tunghai Garden) home near Tunghai University, and later in her book, she writes about that experience in third-person voice, perhaps to distance her current self from the stubborn and ungrateful person she portrays her childhood self as being. Later on, after she tells of Yang Kui's death in 1985, Yang Tsui attaches a postcript called "Confessions of a Garden Girl" (花園女孩懺情錄), in which she describes (this time in the first person) her last few years with Yang Kui, including when she was a senior at Fu-Jen and lived with him in a house in the hills belonging to a friend of his. She moved out with the excuse that she needed to live closer to the university so she could study more for graduate school entrance exams instead of spending a lot of time commuting. She seems to blame this decision for her grandfather's death. 

In a sense, then, this book acts as a kind of penance for Yang Tsui, as she suggests in this postscript when she writes that "this book is an inscription of more than 30 years of penance" (這本書，銘刻著超過三十年的精神苦行).   

There's a lot more I could say about this book, and I will try to dig into some of those topics I listed above at some point if I get a chance. I think Yang Kui is someone I'm going to have to research in more depth.