1 Patterns of Personal and Political Life Among Taiwanese-Americans Linda Gail Arrigo Post-Doc, Inst. of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, 2002-04 Green Party Taiwan International Affairs Officer, 1997-present Tel: (886-2) 2662-3677 Fax: 2662-6897 Mobile: 0928-889-931 E-mail:
[email protected] Mail: No. 38, 6F, Tsui-Gu Street, Shen Keng Township, Taipei County 222, TAIWAN 2006 submitted to Taiwan Inquiry , a journal of the North American Taiwanese Professors’ Association (earlier version was presented at the Asian-American Literature Conference May 7, 2005, Chinese College of Culture, Taipei, Taiwan) ABSTRACT Taiwanese migrated to the United States first as graduate students in science fields in the late 1960s and 1970s, and later also as investors and businessmen in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Although within the United States they were classified within the broad ethnic category “Chinese American”, among the migrants the sharp political and cultural divide between native Taiwanese and Chinese “mainlanders” within Taiwan of the early period was reproduced and in fact exaggerated overseas, where the migrants could opt for separate social circles and language usage in private life. Moreover, in the mid-1970’s Hokkien-speaking Taiwanese-Americans took up a strident and relatively unified community position in support of Taiwan’s democratization and independence that deeply affected their personal lives and their relations with their homeland, given the Taiwan government’s overseas network of spies and the blacklisting that denied them the right to return. With the rising clout of the native Taiwanese middle class in Taiwan and then political opening in the late 1980’s, tensions decreased, and the businessmen migrants contributed to the growth of enclaves dubbed “Little Taipei” such as in Flushing, New York and Monterey Park, California, where the native Taiwanese vs.