Hakka Female Identity in Postcolonial Taiwan: The Shigang Mama Theatre Group and Images of Hakka Women

In this paper, I attempt to apply the perspective of postcolonial feminist criticism to explore the postcolonial circumstances of Hakka women in Taiwan through a discussion of their representation in two plays: River in the Heart and Pear Flowers, both produced by the Shigang Mama Theatre Group. In adopting a postcolonial feminist critical framework, this article seeks to avoid consigning the Hakka cultural and gender issues of these Shigang women and their earthquake disaster experiences into the generic category of women “in the Third World.” Instead, it will reflect on the complexity and difficulty of cultural identity and explore the specific life experiences of Shigang women and their conversion of Hakka women’s oppressions into social practices as another contribution to postcolonial feminist theatre.