
In her books Away From Home: and Back: My United Family and Xiu Mei, she seeks the trajectory of life's back-and-forth. Taiwanese writer Chih-Hsin Chang centres Hakka culture, family history, and the migration of ethnic groups in her work. Growing up in a family that includes Hakka, Vietnamese, Indonesian, South African, Amis, and Atayal ethnic groups, she is a microcosm of contemporary Taiwan, which happens to be in dialogue with globalization and the Canadian immigrant community. Starting from her literary works, Chang intertwines food and memory, depicting the cultural encounters of Taiwan's small towns in the context of different eras. Her family memories also extend to the Vietnamese and Indonesian immigrants during the Vietnam War era, reflecting the relocation of industries and the fusion of families. She will use traditional Hakka cuisine to show the connection between the history of women's lives and the culture of food and drink. Each dish is linked to the memory of an era, presenting the history and development of the region, as well as a glimpse of Taiwan's diversity and tolerance from the table.
Chih-Hsin Chang was born in 1982 in a Hakka village in northern Hsinchu, Taiwan, and grew up in a family shaped by diverse and intersecting cultures. Her fiction maintains both a close and reflective distance from her personal life—drawing on family members as character prototypes, she weaves together the stories of her grandfather, grandmother, and parents with broader currents of familial and social change, creating novels that resonate deeply with generational memory.
Chang is known for her nuanced depictions of the interplay between ethnicity, gender, and family, capturing restrained emotional undercurrents through everyday details. Her characters reflect a wide cultural spectrum: Hakka, Indigenous Taiwanese, as well as Vietnamese and Indonesian migrants. This cultural diversity is mirrored in her use of language—her novels frequently blend Hakka, Mandarin, and the native languages of her characters, giving voice to Taiwan’s multilingual, multicultural landscape.
以書寫尋找生命中往返流動的軌跡,出身新竹客庄的台灣作家張郅忻,其創作特別關注客家文化、家庭歷史以及族群移動,著有《我家是聯合國》、《秀梅》等書。在融合客家、越南、印尼、南非、阿美族、泰雅族等多元族群的家族中長大,像當代台灣的縮影,恰巧也能與全球化以及加拿大移民社會對話。本次演講張郅忻將從他的文學作品出發,帶領觀眾走入食物與記憶的交織,描繪台灣小鎮在不同時代背景下的變遷與文化交會;家族記憶也延伸至越戰時期的越南與印尼移民,反映產業遷移與家庭融合;最後,他以人物「秀梅」與傳統客家料理,展現女性生命史與飲食文化的深層連結。每一道食物,連結著一個時代的記憶,呈現地區的歷史與發展,也從餐桌上一窺台灣的多元與包容。
張郅忻,1982年生於新竹的客家庄,在跨文化交織的家庭環境中成長。她的小說創作與個人生命經驗有著既貼近又抽離的距離——以家人為角色原型,將阿公、阿婆、父母的故事,融入家族與社會脈動,書寫出一本本呼應記憶的人物小說。
她擅長在文字中刻劃族群、性別與家庭的互動關係,與自細微之處散發出的內斂情感。筆下人物來自不同文化:有客家人、原住民族,也有越南與印尼移民。語言亦如其人,小說中常見客語、華語與角色原生語並存。
TAIWANfest Toronto is grateful to be held on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, that is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We acknowledge our privilege to be gathered here, and commit to work with and be respectful to the Indigenous peoples of this land while we engage in meaningful conversations of culture and reconciliation.