2024 TLA New Bud Award

The Becoming weaves together eight interconnected stories across different timelines to explore the transformative power of memory in the wake of social movements. Through the lens of its protagonist’s journey from campus activism to street protests, the novel delves deeper than the headlines—painting an intimate portrait of relationships, career choices, and the quiet moments between demonstrations. Shifting between first and third-person perspectives, the narrative captures the delicate balance activists strike between engagement and withdrawal and between working within the system and challenging it from outside. Each chapter unfolds like a carefully preserved photograph, revealing different facets of the activist experience. Set against the backdrop of Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement, the novel traces the ripples before and after this watershed moment, chronicling the fluid, often fragmentary nature of activism, showing how people oscillate between passionate conviction and paralyzed uncertainty, and inspiring readers to contemplate their own relationship with social change.