Drifting: Green Integer

The first volume in The Taiwanese Modern Literature Series, Drifting consists of translations from Cheung's collection Drifters, first published in Taipei in 1986. This collection centers upon the metaphors of drifting, in which language and meaning, wander between two worlds, the East and the West, between the private home and a shared country. The metaphor, of course, also brings up the disillusionments of contemporary Taiwanese culture and the seemingly impossible dream of the shared homeland of China.

Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Cheung first came to the United States as a graduate student in 1967. He sees himself as an American writing in Chinese, and as a Chinese poet and Asian American writer both.