In this well-conceived and carefully argued study, Alison Groppe explores the compelling and diverse literary responses of sinophone authors to the evolving question of what it means to be a Chinese-speaking individual of Chinese descent in postcolonial Malaysia. Caught between the Malay-centric definitions of Malaysian national literature and the China-focused Sinitic traditions of most Chinese literature, Malaysian Chinese authors who write in Chinese have employed a range of different strategies to give voice to the richly figured terrain of their multicultural world on the borders of national imaginings.
Groppe frames her study by drawing on theories of diasporic consciousness and on the sinophone, as articulated by Shu-mei Shi, which refers to individuals of Chinese descent who continue to communicate through Sinitic languages outside of China. While discussions in later chapters connect in useful ways to such theories as “Pop Culture China” and “Reflexive Nostalgia,” the main thrust of this book is a careful and detailed analysis of the literary styles and themes of a set of key sinophone Malaysian authors who have responded in unique ways to issues of linguistic style and representation, traditional Chinese culture, southern Chinese forms of popular culture, personal nostalgia, and counter-narratives of local communist movements.
The unusual continuity of Sinitic language and culture in Malaysia has been nurtured and supported by a long-standing tradition of Chinese schools and Chinese newspapers, as well as by responses to Malay-centric language, education, and culture policies that have intensified support for Chinese language and culture and propelled a selective generation of Chinese Malaysian students to study in Taiwanese universities. Most, though not all, Sinophone Malaysian authors are products of this Taiwan experience, so that much of this literature reflects a complex response to intermingled trends from Taiwan and China as well as the Malaysian experience.
Authors born and educated outside of centers of Chinese learning, such as China and Taiwan, feel particular pressures to prove their mastery of the language, with some authors, such as Li Tianbao and Li Yongping, choosing to self-consciously mirror classical Chinese aesthetics in their writing style. Others, such as Ng Kim Chew, criticize this approach as bowing to Chinese hegemony and advocate the development of a distinctive sinophone Malaysian literary style and voice that reflects the Malaysian experience. Groppe notes that the tension between developing a more literary language and one that reflects colloquial speech is common to sinophone writers in general. However, using Chinese characters to reflect the hybrid character of Malaysian Chinese spoken language, which includes not only southern Chinese topolects, such as Cantonese and Hokkien, but also Malay and English vocabulary, presents unique challenges to both authors and readers.
References to the popular culture of music and film associated with Republican Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are important leitmotifs that Groppe explores in the literary works of sinophone author Li Tianbao and Malaysian Chinese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang. She constructively contrasts this with Tu Weiming's concept of a Confucian-oriented Cultural China, which she argues is much less relevant to the Malaysian experience.
The sinophone worlds revealed in the texts that Groppe selectively and expertly analyzes reflect not only the diverse contexts of growing up in different Malaysian settings, such as Borneo or west Malaysia, but also a range of responses to British colonialism, the various internal communist movements, and the current ethnic situation, where the strictures of government censorship demand careful circumspection. Stories by Li Yongping exhibit the emergence of strong Chinese nationalist sentiments in response to a British colonial hierarchy that privileged anglophone education and culture. Other stories convey the personal experiences of individuals caught up in communist insurgencies in Borneo and west Malaysia, exploring the “affective dimensions” and “the emotional impacts of the violence that surrounded and grew from them” (p. 236). This literature offers an alternative view to the official histories of these movements that emphasize their illegality, adding a more complex personal perspective to public memory.
This volume breaks new ground in several respects. First, it offers to English readers a careful review of critical commentary on sinophone Malaysian literature by Chinese authors that was previously accessible only to Chinese readers. Second, it presents in considerable depth the political and cultural background that situates these authors and their works in the interstices between multiple literary and cultural worlds. Groppe's sophisticated textual analysis highlights thematic issues that resonate clearly with multiple layers of sinophone experiences and perspectives (the many ways of being Malaysian Chinese), while also enticing the reader to wish to read the original versions of these works.
Two questions remain largely unaddressed. The first has to do with the audience for this literature, which as far as I know, is not that widely read in Malaysia. Who do these authors imagine they are writing for and how does this affect their choices? The second question relates to the sinophone concept. Although the authors here clearly fall within the rubric of Sinitic authors outside of China, their literary attention clearly faces back toward connections with China and Taiwan rather than outward towards other sinophone realms.
