Discovered today via Asian Review of Books (highly recommended: @asianreviewofbooks), the newly published book Eyes of the Sky (March 2026) by Indigenous Taiwanese author Syaman Rapongan, translated by Kyle Shernuk.
Rapongan is one of the most important Taiwanese authors in recent years, a renowned “ocean writer” from Orchid Island off the southeastern coast of Taiwan. I know he is of the Tao indigenous people (pronounced as “da-wu”), but I didn’t know that people’s other name, “Yami”, was coined by Japanese anthropologist Ryuzo Torii when he visited Orchid Island in 1896. That was the year after Taiwan was ceded to the Japanese Empire as a colony.
A Wikipedia search on “Yami” leads back to the Tao people, who are in fact an Austronesian ethnic group. When I was growing up, their fight against the storage of nuclear waste on Orchid Island was both legendary and inspiring. But a lot of people in the West are only aware of their Flying Fish Festival and distinct canoes.
Anyway, considering Eyes of the Sky was originally published in 2012, it is great to know that one of Rapongan’s later books, Eyes of the Ocean (2018), was already translated into English in August 2025 by Darryl Sterk. (By the way: Apparently, Wikipedia doesn’t have an English page on Syaman Rapongan. Perhaps @columbiauniversitypress can do one to boost the sales?)
Now, Sterk’s various translations of Taiwanese authors are highly readable and I would recommend The Stolen Bicycle by Wu Ming-Yi (2015), Ghost Town by Kevin Chen (2022) and The Mermaid’s Tale by Lee Wei-Jing (2022).
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Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 