The Surveillance: Tales of White Terror in Taiwan

"C.J. Anderson-Wu's book The Surveillance opens up the White Terror period of Taiwan's history through a series of short stories that explore the themes of censorship, imprisonment and repression within the daily life of the people suffering through a surveillance obsessed police state that makes every citizen a victim while saving the worst abuses for the vulnerable indigenous population of the island that met accusations of communist ties with incredulity while suffering horrific injustices as a consequence of their lack of political empowerment.This work is not a simple narrative of good and evil by any means though for the author brings out the infectious viral-like nature of political repression. Those who hold the whip hand are made well aware of the fact that they may be the next to taste the pain of torture, imprisonment or summary execution." — Gustav F. Bliss

"Because this collection is very much about censorship, using banned books to delineate how it was can help readers today better understand that the operation of censorship went beyond restricting people's freedom of expression, it was integral to systematic repression. Additionally, with so many stories in stories, the author meant to investigate the role of literature in resistance, especially in totalitarian societies. It is the past of Taiwan, but it still is the present of many societies today. This book stimulates us to think about the possibilities of resisting injustice, an action not only belonging to history, but even more necessary today." — Filipmann G. Pearson

C.J. Anderson-Wu is a Taiwanese writer, in 2017 she published Impossible to Swallow—A Collection of Short Stories About The White Terror in Taiwan. Based on true characters and real incidents, her fictional works look into the political oppression in Taiwanese society during the period of Martial Law (1949-1987), and the traumas resulting from the state's brutal violation of human rights.