Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
Pages: 208
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-78348-338-9 • Hardback • August 2015 • $176.00 • (£137.00)
978-1-78348-339-6 • Paperback • July 2015 • $59.00 • (£45.00)
978-1-78348-340-2 • eBook • July 2015 • $56.00 • (£43.00)
Sheng-mei Ma is Professor of English at Michigan State University.
Acknowledgments / Figures / Introduction / 1. Trauma and Taiwan’s Melodrama: Seven Orphans of Cape No. 7 / 2. Island’s Irony: Virtual Pilgrimage Circum-Taiwan in Search of the High Cs / 3. Mazu’s Touch, Taiwan Nezha and Crying / 4. Globalization’s Bottom: Subtitle and Switch in Wang Yu-Lin’s Taiwanese Dialect Films / 5. Wet Umbrella and The White Snake / 6. Hyde-and-Seek in Asian Diaspora: Deann Borshay Liem’s Negative and Ang Lee’s Ventriloquy / 7. Sold Mountain: Chinese-Language Films on Shangri-La / 8. Nestle in Shalu / 9. Taiwan’s English Education: A Fish with Three Heads / 10. The Fate of Accidental Taiwanese: 5 Ways to Leave Your Father / Coda: China Laying Golden Eggs / Bibliography / Index
Sheng-mei Ma's " The Last Isle" is an engaging look at Taiwan's never-ending trauma through the lens of film, trauma, and popular culture. Ma does a masterful job of bringing together voluminous amounts of scattered information, carefully analyzed with an abundance of allusions to historical and contemporary phenomena, and presented with poetic-like prose.
— John A. Lent, International Journal of Comic Art
The first critical analysis of contemporary Taiwanese film and culture.
Includes an analysis of relatively unknown films including Cape No. 7, Island Etude, Din Tao and Seven Days in Heaven to consider why they have struggled to gain recognition in global cinema.
Argues that Taiwan’s marginalized global position stems as much from its multilinguality as from China’s influence.