Yang Shuang-Zi: Leading with Untold Stories
Mandarin is the most spoken language in the world, and until last week no novel written in it had ever won the International Booker Prize. Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-Zi, translated into English by Lin King, is the book that broke that record. The novel is set in 1938 and follows a Japanese travel writer journeying through Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule, with a young Taiwanese woman as her interpreter, and the relationship between the two unfolds across the meals they share. A story drawn from a particular moment in Taiwanese history, told in Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien, has now reached readers in every language the prize touches. This week, we reflect on what it means to lead by expressing ideas that history, politics, or culture have often left unheard.
Yáng Shuāng-zǐ: “Don’t just look at yourself. Look at the world more, and think about what we can do in it.”
Writing Against Silence
Taiwan Travelogue explores memory, identity, colonialism, and belonging through food writing and historical fiction. Through these topics, each page details experiences that rarely occupy the foreground of global literature. Rather than presenting history as distant or abstract, Yang Shuang-Zi expresses these uniquely Taiwanese encounters through intimate encounters, meals, conversations, journeys, and companionship. In doing so, she leads through perspectives grounded not in authority or visibility alone, but in the careful act of bringing overlooked stories into public consciousness through creative expression.
Like many writers working across questions of identity and history, Yang’s work exists within unaddressed tensions of language, translation, and representation. The novel’s international success is not only a literary achievement, but also an ambitious reminder that underrepresented stories can transcend barriers to become global leaders.
The Courage To Be Specific
The significance of the Booker Prize win lies partly in its specificity. Rather than flattening cultural experience into something universally familiar, Yang Shuang-Zi’s work remains deeply rooted in Taiwanese history and identity. The leadership her work reflects is therefore not one of simplification, but of conviction, trusting that honest and locally grounded stories can still resonate globally.
This speaks to the Laidlaw value of being #Curious and the Oxford Character Project virtue of #Integrity: the willingness to engage deeply with perspectives that may initially seem unfamiliar, while remaining truthful to the realities from which those perspectives emerge.
A Call To Reflect
We invite you to reflect on Yang Shuang-Zi’s example. In your research, Leadership in Action project, or studies, whose stories or perspectives risk being overlooked? Whose creativity is stifled under the status quo? And how can leadership involve creating spaces for voices, histories, or experiences that are too often left outside the conversation?
Photo credit: Sophia Evans for The Observer