A nation must think before it acts.
Green Island: A Novel, written by Shawna Yang Ryan, who teaches creative writing at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, is a welcome treatment of one of the least written about periods in Taiwan’s modern history. The book’s title is a play on words. Green Island lies off Taiwan’s east coast, 21 miles from the city of Taitung. Perhaps more important, however, is its metaphorical meaning: during the martial law-era, 1949-1987, the island was used as a prison under the single-party dictatorship of the Kuomintang (KMT).