Kòo-Sū premiered online during the 2021 Taiwanese American Cultural Festival with a series of readings centered around the theme of “Mother Tongue”
About koo-Su
Kòo-Sū is a series of live or virtual programs aimed at sharing a Taiwanese storytelling experience with the world. The programs will bring together Taiwanese diaspora writers for literary readings and other forms of oral storytelling that help illuminate experiences in Taiwan and among the diaspora in the United States and around the world.
In the Taiwanese language (similar to Hokkien and part of the Southern Min family), Kòo-Sū means a folktale or simply, an old story. We want to have a strong connection to our roots, but we are also interested in modern stories that reflect contemporary Taiwan or experiences of Taiwanese people in America or other parts of the world. We are looking for narratives told in the form of personal essays, fiction, poetry, short videos, or simply old-fashioned stories told out loud.
Hearing narratives honors the tradition of oral storytelling and shares the sound of the Taiwanese words, which is quickly being lost even in Taiwan after 70 years of Mandarin being enforced as the official language. Fortunately, many post-1965 immigrants to America continued to speak Tâi-oân-ōe and the language is perhaps even stronger in the diaspora than on the island.
Kòo-Sū is a space for celebrating and preserving this linguistic heritage and being present to the complicated ways that indigenous, Taiwanese, Hakka, Mandarin, Japanese, and English languages interact.
In the future, we hope to participate in other virtual Asian American and literary programs and eventually host a dedicated in-person stage event.
Watch Kòo-Sū at the Taiwanese American Cultural Festival
Intro and excerpt from my essay “On Preserving Taiwanese Through Romanization”