Singapore Comparative Literature Compendium

Singapore Comparative Literature Compendium presents an array of essential readings from the local canon. A compelling argument for the comparative study of Singapore's multilingual literature, the compendium aims to encourage inter-ethnic, inter-lingual, and inter-cultural transfer through the study of cultural expression across language and cultural divides within Singapore's literary scene. Apart from education and language policy, the compendium features the following seven sections: politics and history; gender, sexuality, and patriarchy; growing up, ageing, mortality; new migrants; multiculturalism and minority concerns; travel, regionalism, and global SG; and lastly, genre, experimental and speculative fiction. In turn, this compendium aims to alter entrenched orientations and encourage movement beyond the ascriptive parameters that organise cultural discussion in Singapore About the Editors: Sim Wai Chew is an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University. His academic specialisations include comparative literature, postcolonial literature and theory, and translingual literature and theory. His works include Kazuo Ishiguro (published by Routledge in 2010), British-Asian Fiction (published by Mellen in 2007) and Island Voices: A Collection of Short Stories from Singapore (published by Learners in 2007). He also recently published an English translation of Chia Joo Ming's sinophone novel Exile or Pursuit (published in 2019 by Balestier Press). His research has appeared in the journals Textual Practice, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, CLCWeb Comparative Literature and Culture, and Sun Yat-sen Journal of Humanities. Yow Cheun Hoe is an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University, where he is the head of the Chinese programme, Director of the Chinese Heritage Centre, and Director of the Centre for Chinese Language and Culture. He is a chief editor for Huaren Yanjiu Guoji Xuebao (International Journal of Diasporic Chinese Studies) and book review editor for Journal of Chinese Overseas. His academic specialisations include Chinese migration and diaspora, qiaoxiang (Overseas Chinese homeland) ties, and diasporic Chinese literature. His books include Xinjiapo yu Zhongguo xin yimin (New Chinese Migrants in Singapore: A Question of Citizenship) (published by the City University of Hong Kong Press in 2021); Yimin guiji he lisan lunshu: Xin Ma huaren zuqun de chongceng mailuo (Migration Trajectories and Diasporic Discourses: Multiples Contexts of Ethnic Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia) (published by Shanghai Sanlian Shudian in 2014), and Guangdong and Chinese Diaspora: The Changing Landscape of Qiaoxiang (published by Routledge in 2013). His articles have appeared in the Journal of Contemporary China, Modern Asian Studies, Asian Ethnicity, Cross-Cultural Studies, Changjiang Xueshu, and Waiguo Wenxue Yanjiu.

This collection gives a diversified account of world literature, examining not only the rise of the concept, but also problems such as the relation between the local and the universal, and the tensions between national culture and global ethics. In this context, it focuses on the complex relationship between Chinese literature and world literature, not only in the sense of providing an exemplary case study, but also as an introspection and re-location of Chinese literature itself. The book activates the concept of world literature at a time when it is facing the rising modern day challenges of race, class and culture.

The world is anything but unfamiliar with diaspora: Jewish, African, Armenian, Roma-Gipsy, Filipino/a, Tamil, Irish or Italian, even Japanese. But few have carried so global a resonance as that of China. What, then, of literary-cultural expression, the huge body of fiction which has addressed itself to that plurality of lives and geographies and which has come to be known as “After China”? This collection of essays offers bearings on those written in English, and in which both memory and story are central, spanning the USA to Australia, Canada to the UK, Hong Kong to Singapore, with yet others of more transnational nature.This collection opens with a reprise of woman-authored Chinese American fiction using Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan as departure points. In turn follow readings of the oeuvres of Tan and Frank Chin. A comparative essay takes up novels by Canadian, American and Australian authors from the perspective of migrancy as fracture. Chinese Canada comes into view in accounts of SKY Lee, Wayson Choy, Evelyn Lau and Larissa Lai. Australia under Chinese literary auspices is given a comparative mapping through the fiction of Brian Castro and Ouyang Yu. The English language “China fiction” of Singapore and Hong Kong is located in essays centred, respectively, on Martin Booth and Po Wah Lam, and Hwee Hwee Tan and Colin Cheong. The collection rounds out with portraits of Timothy Mo as British transnational author, a selection of contextual Chinese British stories and art, and the phenomenon of “Chinese Chick Lit” novels. China Fictions/English Language will be of interest to readers drawn both to “After China” as diasporic literary heritage and comparative literature in general.

Malaysian Chinese (Mahua) literature is marginalized on several fronts. In the international literary space, which privileges the West, Malaysia is considered remote. The institutions of modern Chinese literature favor mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Within Malaysia, only texts in Malay, the national language, are considered national literature by the state. However, Mahua authors have produced creative and thought-provoking works that have won growing critical recognition, showing Malaysia to be a laboratory for imaginative Chinese writing. Highlighting Mahua literature’s distinctive mode of evolution, Cheow Thia Chan demonstrates that authors’ grasp of their marginality in the world-Chinese literary space has been the impetus for—rather than a barrier to—aesthetic inventiveness. He foregrounds the historical links between Malaysia and other Chinese-speaking regions, tracing how Mahua writers engage in the “worlding” of modern Chinese literature by navigating interconnected literary spaces. Focusing on writers including Lin Cantian, Han Suyin, Wang Anyi, and Li Yongping, whose works craft signature literary languages, Chan examines narrative representations of multilingual social realities and authorial reflections on colonial Malaya or independent Malaysia as valid literary terrain. Delineating the inter-Asian “crossings” of Mahua literary production—physical journeys, interactions among social groups, and mindset shifts—from the 1930s to the 2000s, he contends that new perspectives from the periphery are essential to understanding the globalization of modern Chinese literature. By emphasizing the inner diversities and connected histories in the margins, Malaysian Crossings offers a powerful argument for remapping global Chinese literature and world literature.

How We Live Now offers a multi-faceted, multi-voiced view of contemporary life in Singapore: its comforts and conflicts, personal tragedies and social tensions, and also opportunities for joy, hope and empathy. Featuring an exciting ensemble of both established and new writers, the stories invite readers to think seriously about the world around them, with urgent contemporary challenges such as social inequality and mental health, as well as age-old frictions in personal relationships and friendships. As this slate of characters grapples with crisis, loss, and what it means to hold each other close in a rapidly changing Singapore, we are invited to ponder: if this is indeed how we live now, should we continue in this vein?