Malaysia. Sinophone Malaysian literature: Not made in China By Alison M. Groppe Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2013. Pp. 325. Bibliography, Index.

Abstract

Malaysia Sinophone Malaysian literature: Not made in China By ALISON M. GROPPE Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2013. Pp. 325. Bibliography, Index. Sinophone literatures from Southeast Asia have long been doubly marginalised: they have been deemed 'sectional' literatures, produced in languages other than the national language, and thus for consumption by minority populations only. At the same time, they were regarded as derivative texts, far removed from the centre of cultural production in China. At least with regard to the latter aspect, the situation has changed dramatically with the rise of the Sinophone as a critical paradigm, which has recently been declared an 'Idea of the Decade' by the American Comparative Literature Association. With an outpouring of new, innovative research and a flurry of publications, Southeast Asia has very much become the centre of critical inquiry in Chinese literary studies. Alison Groppe's timely new book is an important addition to this rapidly growing literature. Importantly, Groppe's well-researched study moves beyond the larger horizon of the 'Sinophone' by zooming in onto one particularly vibrant literature, that produced by authors born in colonial Malaya or independent Malaysia. Giving sustained attention to authors such as Ng Kim Chew, Li Yongping, and Zhang Guixing, Groppe asks how Sinophone Malaysian writers position themselves with a view to three major nodes of identity formation, namely, the imaginary homeland 'China', the vibrant cultural and intellectual world of Taiwan, and Malaysia--space of memory and roots, affiliations and imagination, longing as well as trauma. 'Sinophone Malaysian literature,' says Groppe, 'grows from a complex web of attachments' (p. 20); the links of the writers discussed here to Malaysia, Taiwan, and China 'are not accepted as given but are subject to scrutiny, conceptualisation, even interrogation' (p. 12). Sinophone Malaysian literature consists of seven chapters and a conclusion. The Introduction addresses the terminological and conceptual problems raised by the Sinophone, in both English and Chinese, which eventually points to questions of identity and identification. As a critical concept, the Sinophone, or Huayu, has the advantage of highlighting conscious linguistic choices and positions, without however subsuming the resulting literary production under a hegemonic, China-centric world view. It acknowledges that Sinophone literature in Southeast Asia coexists (and, to some degree, interacts) with multiple other local languages, official or non-official; and it disrupts the claim of congruence between nation-states, languages, and literatures. Chapter 2 provides a good historical overview of modern Sinophone Malaysian literature (Mahua wenxue) since its inception in the 1920s, based on a synthesis of much of the existing research in both English and Chinese. This chapter will prove especially useful in the classroom. The third chapter, 'Language, place, and identity', places the book's theoretical core concerns in historical perspective. The creation of a distinctive literary voice has been a central issue in Sinophone Malaysian literature since at least the 1940s. Realist authors from the 1950s and 1960s pursued a strategy of colloquialisation, which allowed them to express local sensibilities and create cultural identity by incorporating vernacular elements into the literary language. …