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Linda Arrigo has been in Taiwan for many years, working as a human rights activist, as an important member of the early team of fighters who risked life and limb for a democratic Taiwan, and more recently, worked with the Taiwan Green Party on environmental issues such as stopping NPP4. She's also taught in local universities as a professor. Her Ph.D. thesis (1996) was on land ownership inequality in pre-1949 China, a topic she started working on in 1975 during early graduate study -- but had to return to because her questionnaires on girl factory workers in Taiwan (field research 1975, 1977-79) were confiscated during a police raid on her home following the Kaohsiung Incident. She was married to the late Shih Ming-teh from 1978 to 1995. And while, like many, she has a great amount of respect for the former political prisoner-turned statesman, Linda notes that history will unfortunately remember the errors he made in his latter decades that sullied his once-glowing reputation.
Cover: Left, Linda Arrigo being "escorted" by military police in 1980. And right, Linda in more recent years, still campaigning for a better Taiwan. (Left pic via Taiwan Panorama, right pic via Linda Arrigo/Facebook)
Linda Gail Arrigo and the Taiwan Democratic Movement: official website
Here is one example of what the pro-govt English press wrote about the Kaohsiung Incident in 1980.
Linda was married to the late Shih Ming-teh from 1978 to 1995. In this chat she gives him much high praise, calling him essentially "the spirit of the revolution." But, she says he was turned by flattery, money and women... to the point that he became a different person than the "willing to die for Taiwan" political prisoner and democracy activist he once was.
See our episode on the life of Shih Ming-teh (Jan. 15, 1941 - Jan. 15, 2024)
Below: Linda's book, A Borrowed Voice written and edited by Linda Gail Arrigo / Lynn Miles, was released in 2008.
Check our very first episode, the story of a very white man who showed up in London in 1703... and claimed to be from Formosa. Or try a foodie episode from Season 3. Or, for those who want some harder-core history, hear the tale of the Lockheed U-2 pilot Wang Hsi-chueh 王錫爵, who became was famous for defecting to the PRC by hijacking China Airlines Flight 334 on May 3, 1986.
