Synopses & Reviews
Review
“Shawna Yang Ryan’s propulsive storytelling carries us through a bloody time in Taiwanese history, its implications still reverberating today. The story is haunted by questions about whether Taiwan is a part of China or its own country, what the costs are of standing up for one’s beliefs and by the choices made by one father and his daughter. Green Island is a tough, unsentimental and moving novel that is a memorial not only to the heroes, but also to the survivors.” Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer
Review
“Epic.... The narrative works movingly on many different levels but especially on the personal and the political.” Kirkus Reviews
Review
“[An] engrossing epic.... Absorbing and affecting, this powerful tale explores the bond between a father and daughter, the compromises they are forced to make, and the prices they pay in their quest for freedom.” Kristine Huntley, Booklist (starred)
About the Author
SHAWNA YANG RYAN is a former Fulbright scholar and the author of one previous novel, Water Ghosts; she teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Her short fiction has appeared in ZYZZYVA, The Asian American Literary Review, Kartika Review, and Berkeley Fiction Review. She lives in Honolulu.
Shawna Yang Ryan on PowellsBooks.Blog
Green Island began one sweltering summer day in 1999.
I had been in Taiwan — the country in which my mother had grown up — for
15 months by that point. I lived with my aunt's family in a relatively
large city, but with limited access to English-language books and Western-style food, and on this summer day...
Read More»