''A Pail of Oysters'' is a novel by

Vern Sneider Vernon J. Sneider (6 October 1916 – 1 May 1981) was an American novelist. His 1951 novel '' The Teahouse of the August Moon'' was later adapted for a Broadway play in 1953, a motion picture in 1956, and the Broadway musical ''Lovely Ladies ...

published in 1953. Set during

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

White Terror White Terror is the name of several episodes of mass violence in history, carried out against anarchists, communists, socialists, liberals, revolutionaries, or other opponents by conservative or nationalist groups. It is sometimes contrasted wit ...

era, the book "tells the tragic story of three young Taiwanese people who become involved with an American journalist". Sympathetic to the Taiwanese people and deeply critical of

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...

rule, ''A Pail of Oysters'' was suppressed in the 1950s before gaining new life after the end of martial law in Taiwan.

Aim of the novel

Sneider hoped that the book would reduce the suffering of Taiwanese people under the Kuomintang. He wrote to

George H. Kerr George H. Kerr (November 7, 1911 – August 27, 1992), also known in Taiwan as 葛超智 (or 柯喬治), was a United States diplomat during World War II, and in later years he was an author and an academic. His published works and archived pap ...

, later author of '' Formosa Betrayed'', saying the viewpoint in the novel "will be strictly that of the Formosan people, trying to exist under that government. And … maybe, in my small way, I can do something for the people of Formosa." Jonathan Benda, in his introduction to the 2016 edition of the book, argues that Sneider's novel intended "to make Americans think in particular about the regime they supported in Taiwan, but more generally about what the U.S. role in Asia should be".

Reception

On release the book received positive critical reviews, but was banned in Taiwan and was attacked by the China Lobby in the United States. One academic familiar with the impact of the book commented in 2003 that "copies of ''A Pail of Oysters'' have disappeared from most libraries, probably on instructions issued to the student spies paid by the KMT to monitor Taiwanese on US college campuses".

Reemergence in the 2000s

After the end of martial law in Taiwan the book was published in translated editions in both

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...

(in 2002) and

Taiwanese Taiwanese may refer to: * Taiwanese language, another name for Taiwanese Hokkien * Something from or related to Taiwan ( Formosa) * Taiwanese aborigines, the indigenous people of Taiwan * Han Taiwanese, the Han people of Taiwan * Taiwanese people, ...

(2003). A new English edition appeared in 2016, with an introduction by Jonathan Benda of

Northeastern University Northeastern University (NU) is a private university, private research university with its main campus in Boston. Established in 1898, the university offers undergraduate and graduate programs on its main campus as well as satellite campuses in ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pail of Oysters, A 1953 American novels Novels set in Taiwan