ABSTRACT
The hybrid nature of the colonial literature should not be regarded with embarrassment, as it often has been by narrow-minded nationalists, but, rather, as a true testimony to collective atrocities done by one culture to another in the period of imperialist expansion. The colonial condition in Taiwan is thus a product of the extremely intricate political and cultural negotiations between the colonial government and the local elite, and between the elite and the more disadvantaged classes in a capitalist economy, for whom the progressive intellectuals served as spokesmen. The Nativist Literary debate testified to the prominent leftist influence on Taiwan’s literary scene. The literary program proposed by its chief advocate, Huang Shih-hui—suggesting that writers target their creative works at the working class was clearly modeled after the leftist concept of proletarian literature.
