Just finished reading Anna Beth Keim's Heaven Does Not Block All Roads: A History of Taiwan Through the Life of Huang Chin-tao. I really enjoyed it; although it has a lot of endnotes, it doesn't read like a dry academic book (apologies to writers of dry academic books!). It reads like a novel or a work of creative non-fiction.
I especially appreciate (again, as a writing teacher) the epilogue where the author takes us into the interview setting where she had the opportunity to talk to Huang. As reader(s) of my 2007 paper on Vern Sneider's A Pail of Oysters will know, I have a strong interest in how the scene of translingual, intercultural interviews are portrayed, both in fiction and non-fiction. So I was pleased to get a view of the scenes of Keim's interviews with Huang.
I don't have much time today to discuss the book in more depth, but if I have time later, I'll come back to this.
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