Over the past week, some of the world’s leading gender equality activists have gathered in Kaohsiung for the World Conference of Women’s Shelters. This weekend, two of them will have public engagements in Taipei.
Tomorrow at 2:30pm, Eve Ensler, the American writer and activist best-known for her play The Vagina Monologues, will lead a discussion on her latest book, The Apology.
The memoir takes the form of an imagined letter to Ensler from her late father, who physically and sexually abused her as a child. It has been hailed as a “blueprint of contrition” for perpetrators.
Photo courtesy of The Garden of Hope Foundation
The discussion is hosted by The Garden of Hope Foundation, an NGO that runs women’s shelters, counseling programs and campaigns for gender equality. Admission is free, although donations are appreciated.
Tomorrow at 7pm, Nina Smart, an American sociologist, will give a talk exploring the role of female genital mutilation (FGM) in West African culture and solutions to end the practice.
After escaping FGM while growing up in Sierra Leone, Smart went on to write a memoir and found an NGO to raise awareness about the practice. Her talk is organized by the Taiwan Coalition Against Violence, and admission is NT$200.
Photo courtesy of The Garden of Hope Foundation
■ Eve Ensler’s book discussion is tomorrow, 2:30pm at the third floor auditorium of the Taipei City Youth Development Office, 17, Renai Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (臺北市仁愛路1段17號 ). Register at: reurl.cc/5gvl7G
■ Nina Smart’s talk is tomorrow, 7pm at Brilliant Time bookstore (燦爛時光), 1, Lane 135, Xingnan S Rd Sec 1, New Taipei City (新北市興南路一段135巷1號 )
Michael slides a sequin glove over the pop star’s tarnished legacy, shrouding Michael Jackson’s complications with a conventional biopic that, if you cover your ears, sounds great. Antoine Fuqua’s movie is sanctioned by Jackson’s estate and its producers include the estate’s executors. So it is, by its nature, a narrow, authorized perspective on Jackson. The film ends before the flood of allegations of sexual abuse of children, or Jackson’s own acknowledgment of sleeping alongside kids. Jackson and his estate have long maintained his innocence. In his only criminal trial, in 2005, Jackson was acquitted. Michael doesn’t even subtly nod to these facts.
The March/April volume of Foreign Affairs, long a purveyor of pro-China pablum, offered up another irksome Beijing-speak on the issues and solutions for the problems vexing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the US: “America and China at the Edge of Ruin: A Last Chance to Step Back From the Brink” rang the provocative title, by David M. Lampton and Wang Jisi (王緝思). If one ever wants to describe what went wrong with US-PRC relations, the career of Wang Jisi is a good place to start. Wang has extensive experience in the US and the West. He was a visiting
The January 2028 presidential election is already stirring to life. In seven or eight months, the primary season will kick into high gear following this November’s local elections. By this point next year, we will likely know the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate and whether the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) will be fielding a candidate. Also around this time, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) will either have already completed their primary, or it will be heading into the final stretch. By next summer, the presidential race will be in high gear. The big question is who will be the KMT’s
If one asks Taiwanese why house prices are so high or why the nation is so built up or why certain policies cannot be carried out, one common answer is that “Taiwan is too small.” This is actually true, though not in the way people think. The National Property Administration (NPA), responsible for tracking and managing the government’s real estate assets, maintains statistics on how much land the government owns. As of the end of last year, land for official use constituted 293,655 hectares, for public use 1,732,513 hectares, for non-public use 216,972 hectares and for state enterprises 34 hectares, yielding
RSS