Academic literature on the topic 'Sinophone Malaysian fiction'

AbstractThis article aims at exploring the subversive nature of two Sinophone Malaysian cultural products, namely “Bie zai tiqi” (2002) a short story by Ho Sok Fong and You Mean the World to Me (2017), a full-length feature film by director Saw Teong Hin. I argue that, despite their differences, both fictional products use powerful metafictional and metanarrative devices to challenge factuality. In doing so, they not only blur the fine line between fiction and reality, but they also question cultural power dynamics and ethnic politics in Malaysia. Moreover, they defy the truthfulness of Mandarin as the preferred Sinitic cultural language as well as the idea that, in Malaysia, literature and film can be considered Malaysian only if produced in Malay, the official language of the country. By performing an analysis of the linguistic choices made by Ho Sok Fong and Saw Teong Hin, I will suggest that both the short story and the feature film analysed in this article use metafiction and metanarration to subvert widely-accepted, yet problematic, notions of national culture and common ethnic language.

Abstract This essay uses an examination of intertwined thematics of fish and text in the fiction of the ethnically Malaysian Chinese author Ng Kim Chew in order to reflect on a broader set of ecological concerns, including issues relating to the natural ecology of the Southeast Asian regions depicted in Ng’s works, together with the overlapping literary ecosystems within which his works are embedded. In particular, the essay is concerned with the ways in which Ng’s fiction reflects on the relationship between the field of Southeast Asian Sinophone literature and the partially overlapping ecosystem of world literature.

The present dissertation deals with two interconnected issues within the realm of Sinitic-medium literature from Malaysia. The first issue, of a rather general nature, is constituted by contemporary Sinophone Malaysian fiction. The second, of a more restricted scope, is the Chinese Malaysian identity construction and its representation through intraethnic and interethnic interaction in contemporary Sinophone Malaysian fiction. The main goals that I aim to fulfill with my research are to investigate, systematize, critically analyze and partially translate (into English) a specific body of Sinitic-medium fictional writings. The literary corpus presented here has been personally built through a selection among a wider number of short stories (duanpian xiaoshuo 短篇小說) and novellas (zhongpian xiaoshuo 中篇小說) produced by Sinophone Malaysian writers. Through this process of scrutiny, systematization, analysis and translation, I wish to pinpoint a topic which although is less researched in Sinophone Malaysian literary studies, is very often explored by Sinophone Malaysian authors in their creative writings. Hence, I will explore how Chinese Malaysian identity is shaped through the literary representation of two main types of interaction. Firstly, I will examine the literary portrayal of the relationship between the Chinese Malaysian Self and ethnic Chinese people from other geographic locales such as mainland Chinese, Chinese Singaporeans, etc. Subsequently, I will investigate how Sinophone Malaysian writers represent the relationship between Chinese Malaysians and Malaysians of other ethnic heritages such as Malays, aboriginal people from the peninsula and natives of Sarawak.

La presente tesis trata dos temas relacionados entre ellos dentro del ámbito de la literatura sinófona de Malasia. El primer tema es de natura más general y se centra en la narrativa sino-malaya contemporánea como sistema literario. El segundo, en cambio, es de ámbito más restringido y, dentro de la narrativa sino-malaya contemporánea, se centra en la construcción de la identidad a través de las relaciones intraétnicas e interétnicas y su representación literaria. Las relaciones intraétnicas se refieren a las relaciones entre los sino-malayos y los chinos de otros lugares, como por ejemplo los chinos de la Républica Popular, los de Taiwán, los de Singapur, etc., mientras que las interétnicas hacen referencia a las relaciones entre la comunidad sino-malaya y otras comunidades de Malasia pero de distinto origen étnico, como por ejemplo los malayos, los aborígenes de la península y las poblaciones nativas de Borneo. El objetivo de este trabajo es investigar, sistematizar, analizar de manera crítica y traducir 9 obras de ficción divididas en cuentos (短篇小說 duanpian xiaoshuo) y novelas cortas (中篇小說 zhongpian xiaoshuo).
The present dissertation deals with two interconnected issues within the realm of Sinitic-medium literature from Malaysia. The first issue, of a rather general nature, is constituted by contemporary Sinophone Malaysian fiction. The second, of a more restricted scope, is the Chinese Malaysian identity construction and its representation through intraethnic and interethnic interaction in contemporary Sinophone Malaysian fiction. The main goals that I aim to fulfill with my research are to investigate, systematize, critically analyze and partially translate (into English) a specific body of Sinitic-medium fictional writings. The literary corpus presented here has been personally built through a selection among a wider number of short stories (duanpian xiaoshuo 短篇小說) and novellas (zhongpian xiaoshuo 中篇小說) produced by Sinophone Malaysian writers. Through this process of scrutiny, systematization, analysis and translation, I wish to pinpoint a topic which although is less researched in Sinophone Malaysian literary studies, is very often explored by Sinophone Malaysian authors in their creative writings. Hence, I will explore how Chinese Malaysian identity is shaped through the literary representation of two main types of interaction. Firstly, I will examine the literary portrayal of the relationship between the Chinese Malaysian Self and ethnic Chinese people from other geographic locales such as mainland Chinese, Chinese Singaporeans, etc. Subsequently, I will investigate how Sinophone Malaysian writers represent the relationship between Chinese Malaysians and Malaysians of other ethnic heritages such as Malays, aboriginal people from the peninsula and natives of Sarawak.

The third chapter examines the MFU, a film organisation affiliated with the post-war British colonial government, and its multilingual colonial films. The MFU produced a large number of historical and geographical documentaries in support of the British colonial regime and the Singaporean and Malayan autonomous governments. The film unit also directed the production and filming of many propaganda films and feature films accompanied by recordings and commentaries in different languages and Chinese topolects. These films vigorously promoted Cold War ideology to the Malayan people, and all theatres in Malaya were compelled to screen these films. The ultimate goal of the MFU was to interpellate a Malayan identity in order to eradicate the threat posed by communist ideology. This chapter considers films made by the MFU alongside Cold War archival materials gathered from The British Film Institute, The UK National Archives, Imperial War Museums, The British Library, National Archives of Singapore, the National Film Department of Malaysia, and 1950s–1960s reportage on the MFU in US, UK, and local newspapers in Chinese and English. It will explore how Chinese New Village settlers and Malayan communists were represented in semi-realistic/semi-fictional moving images during the Cold War period. This chapter aims to reconsider the question of whether the aim of the MFU really was to hasten the end of empire, or if it was an extension of the imperialist machinery of state in S.E. Asia.