The “Rhetoric of Self-Making” in the Writings of Sui Sin Far

Abstract

ABSTRACT A recuperative undertaking of significant scale, Becoming Sui Sin Far includes a “range of styles and narrative voices” that reveals the author to be “far more prolific than previously believed,” with an existing oeuvre now standing at 206 pieces. Editor Mary Chapman is at her best when she gathers the rich historical and cultural evidence that places Sui Sin Far within the stream of influences of her time. However, Chapman makes too big a claim for the literary interpretation made possible by this expanded oeuvre, in which Sui Sin Far's “transnational” agenda and shifting subject positions reveal her gradual move toward Eurasian/dislocated subjectivity. Recovery scholarship produced prior to her undertaking, which Chapman characterizes as limited, had already laid the groundwork for this interpretation. Thus, the collection richly extends rather than breaks with previous scholarship.