Colony, Nation, and Globalisation: Not at Home in Singaporean and Malaysian Literature

by Eddie Tay

Overview

This book explores colonial and postcolonial literatures of Singapore and Malaysia. It traces in them a history of anxiety that attends to the notion of home. The premise is that home is a physical space as well as a symbolic terrain invested with social, political, and cultural meanings.

Eddie Tay is assistant professor of English, Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789888028740
Publisher:	Hong Kong University Press
Publication date:	01/11/2011
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Eddie Tay is an assistant professor at the Department of English, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is also the author of three collections of poetry.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

I Colony: British Malaya 13

Chapter 1 Amok and Arrogation: Frank Swettenham's 'Real Malay' 15

Chapter 2 Discourses of Difference: Isabella Bird, Emily Innes, and Florence Caddy 31

Chapter 3 The Exhaustion of Colonial Romance: W. Somerset Maugham and Anthony Burgess 45

II Nations: Malaya, Singapore, and Malaysia 61

Chapter 4 'There is no way out but through': Lee Kok Liang and the Malayan Nation 63

Chapter 5 Nationalism and Literature: Two Poems Concerning the Merlion and Karim Raslan's "Heroes" 77

Chapter 6 Irresponsibility and Commitment: Philip Jeyaretnam's Abraham 's Promise and Gopal Baratham's A Candle or the Sun 93

III Globalisation: Home is Elsewhere 107

Chapter 7 The Post-Diasporic Imagination: The Novels of K. S. Maniam 109

Chapter 8 Two Singaporeans in America: Hwee Hwee Tan's Mammon Inc. and Simon Tay's Alien Asian 121

Chapter 9 Writing Back Home: Tash Aw's The Harmony Silk Factory, Vyvyane Loh's Breaking the Tongue, and Lau Siew Mei's Playing Madame Mao 133

Conclusion 151

Works Cited 153

Index 163

Editorial Reviews

With this book, Eddie Tay makes a dynamic contribution to a new generation of scholarship on Malaysian, Singaporean and, indeed, historical Malayan literature and culture that is driven by the problem of history, cultural identity and subjectivity that ties colonial history and experiences to 'globalised' present. His focus on the literary renditions of home, the unhomely and freedom is vivid and creates a study that will be of interest to readers in the humanities concerned with the questions of the ambiguities of national and postcolonial identity.

C.J.W.-L. Wee

"With this book, Eddie Tay makes a dynamic contribution to a new generation of scholarship on Malaysian, Singaporean and, indeed, historical Malayan literature and culture that is driven by the problem of history, cultural identity and subjectivity that ties colonial history and experiences to 'globalised' present. His focus on the literary renditions of home, the unhomely and freedom is vivid and creates a study that will be of interest to readers in the humanities concerned with the questions of the ambiguities of national and postcolonial identity." C.J.W.-L. Wee, Associate Professor of English, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; author of Culture, Empire, and the Question of Being Modern and The Asian Modern: Culture, Capitalist Development, Singapore

From the Publisher