China Fictions, English Language: Literary Essays in Diaspora, Memory, StoryA. Robert Lee Rodopi, 2008 - 350 pagini The world is anything but unfamiliar with diaspora: Jewish, African, Armenian, Roma-Gipsy, Filipino/a, Tamil, Irish or Italian, even Japanese. But few have carried so global a resonance as that of China. What, then, of literary-cultural expression, the huge body of fiction which has addressed itself to that plurality of lives and geographies and which has come to be known as "After China"? This collection of essays offers bearings on those written in English, and in which both memory and story are central, spanning the USA to Australia, Canada to the UK, Hong Kong to Singapore, with yet others of more transnational nature. This collection opens with a reprise of woman-authored Chinese American fiction using Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan as departure points. In turn follow readings of the oeuvres of Tan and Frank Chin. A comparative essay takes up novels by Canadian, American and Australian authors from the perspective of migrancy as fracture. Chinese Canada comes into view in accounts of SKY Lee, Wayson Choy, Evelyn Lau and Larissa Lai. Australia under Chinese literary auspices is given a comparative mapping through the fiction of Brian Castro and Ouyang Yu. The English language "China fiction" of Singapore and Hong Kong is located in essays centred, respectively, on Martin Booth and Po Wah Lam, and Hwee Hwee Tan and Colin Cheong. The collection rounds out with portraits of Timothy Mo as British transnational author, a selection of contextual Chinese British stories and art, and the phenomenon of "Chinese Chick Lit" novels. China Fictions/English Language will be of interest to readers drawn both to "After China" as diasporic literary heritage and comparative literature in general. |
Cuprins
7 | |
9 | |
33 | |
57 | |
The China Fictions of Frank Chin | 79 |
Representations of Suicide in SKY Lees Disappearing Moon Café Fae Myenne Ngs Bone and HsuMing Teos Love and Vertigo | 101 |
5 Chinatown as Diaspora Space in SKY Lees Disappearing Moon Cafe and Wayson Choys The Jade Peony | 119 |
Evelyn Lau and Larissa Lai | 141 |
Brian Castro Ouyang Yu and Chinese Australia | 183 |
Martin Booths Gweilo and Po Wah Lams The Locust Hunter | 205 |
Language Vision and Resonance in Hwee Hwee Tans Fiction | 239 |
DisLocating Authority Culture and Identity in the Novels of Colin Cheong | 259 |
Timothy Mos New World Disorder | 279 |
The Politics and Poetics of Making a Home in Britain | 299 |
Chick Lit and The New Crossover Fiction | 327 |
Notes on Contributors | 347 |
Nature Transfeminism and Diaspora in Larissa Lais Salt Fish Girl | 161 |
Termeni și expresii frecvente
American appears Asian Asian American Australia becomes begins born British calls Canada Canadian Castro characters Cheong chick child childhood Chin China Chinatown Chinese colonial construction contemporary critical cultural daughter death described desire diaspora discourse English essay ethnic experience father feel feminist fiction figure Girl given gives global Hong Kong identity images imaginative immigrant individual issues kind Kingston language literary Literature lives London look means memory mother move narrative narrator nature novel origins past play political position present protagonists readers References relation relationship represented sense Singapore Singaporean social society space specific story Studies suggests takes Tan’s texts tradition turn understanding University Press West Western woman women Wong writing York young
Pasaje populare
Pagina 206 - It seems that I was always destined to be so deeply concerned with vultures; for I recall as one of my very earliest memories that while I was in my cradle a vulture came down to me, and opened my mouth with its tail, and struck me many times with its tail against my lips
Pagina 49 - Long ago in China, knot-makers tied string into buttons and frogs, and rope into bell pulls. There was one knot so complicated that it blinded the knotmaker. Finally an emperor outlawed this cruel knot, and the nobles could not order it anymore. If I had lived in China, I would have been an outlaw knotmaker.
Pagina 163 - I see advertised The Primer of American Literature. Imagine the face of Philip or Alexander at hearing of a Primer of Macedonian Literature ! Are we to have a Primer of Canadian Literature too, and a Primer of Australian? We are all contributories to one great literature — English Literature. The contribution of Scotland to this literature is far more serious and important than that of America has yet had time to be; yet a "Primer of Scotch Literature
Pagina 85 - ... boys liked to con into singing for us. Come-on opera, we wanted from her, not them Shirley Temple tunes the girls wanted to learn, but big notes, high long ones up from the navel that drilled through plaster and steel and skin and meat for bone marrow and electric wires on one long titpopping breath. This is how I come home, riding a mass of spasms and death throes, warm and screechy inside, itchy, full of ghostpiss, as I drive right past what's left of Oakland's dark wooden Chinatown and dark...
Pagina 47 - ... been confusing. It also had something to do with birds. I was nine years old when the letters made my parents, who are rocks, cry. My father screamed in his sleep. My mother wept and crumpled up the letters. She set fire to them page by page in the ashtray, but new letters came almost every day. The only letters they opened without fear were the ones with red borders, the holiday letters that mustn't carry bad news. The other letters said that my uncles were made to kneel on broken glass during...
Pagina 121 - I argue that the concept of diaspora offers a critique of discourses of fixed origins, while taking account of a homing desire which is not the same thing 614 as desire for a 'homeland'.
Pagina 118 - Diaspora space is the point at which boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, of belonging and otherness, of 'us' and 'them', are contested. My argument is that diaspora space as a conceptual category is 'inhabited', not only by those who have migrated and their descendants, but equally by those who are constructed and represented as indigenous.
Pagina 61 - It's my fault she is this way. I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these two things do not mix? I taught her how American circumstances work. If you are born poor here, it's no lasting shame. You are first in line for a scholarship. If the roof crashes on your head, no need to cry over this bad luck. You can sue anybody, make the landlord fix it.
Pagina 279 - The interactions among peoples of different civilizations enhance the civilization-consciousness of people that, in turn, invigorates differences and animosities stretching or thought to stretch back deep into history. Third, the processes of economic modernization and social change throughout the world are separating people from long-standing local identities. They also weaken the nation state as a source of identity. In much of the world, religion has moved in to fill this gap, often in the form...
Pagina 115 - I'm the stepdaughter of a paper son and I've inherited this whole suitcase of lies. All of it is mine. All I have is those memories, and I want to remember them all