The Exodus of Formosan Languages: A Historical Perspective

Published in National New Books Monthly No. 225《全國新書資訊月刊 第225期》Taipei: National Central Library (September 2017): 4-9. 

My Type of Heteroglossia

Third editorial for IPCF Bimonthly（原視界雙月刊）Vol. 18 October 2017:3.

Trickster Travels: The Search for Leo Africanus (2006)

"A masterpiece of the historian's craft." -Stephen Greenblatt

Leo Africanus was born Al-Hasan ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmed al-Wazzan to a Muslim family in present-day Granada Spain about 1486-1488. Perhaps before the year of great expulsion of 1492, his family had moved across the Gibraltar and settled in present-day Fez Morocco. 

There al-Hasan al-Wazzan grew up and became a qadi (judge of Islamic laws). He had keen ears for Arabic poetry and traveled widely as informant, soldier, emissary and diplomat of the Sultan of Fez. 

In 1518, on his way returning from Cairo Egypt to Fez, he was captured by Christian pirates and took to Rome Italy as a present to Pope Leo X. There he became the godson of Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo, baptized on January 6th 1520 and was given a new name of "Joannes Leo de Medici". 

He never used the family name of Pope Leo X, de Medici. For Christians in Rome, he was Joannes Leo from Africa; for himself, he retained the Arabic name after conversion, Yuhanna al-Asad--Yuhanna the Lion.