SUVANNABHUMI (수완나부미)

Korea Institute for ASEAN Studies (부산외대 아세안연구원)
권호 표지
DOI QR코드

DOI QR Code

Reframing Loss: Chinese Diaspora Identity in K. H. Lim's Written in Black

  • Hannah Ming Yit Ho (Universiti Brunei Darussalam; Fellow, National University of Singapore)
  • Received : 2023.02.03
  • Accepted : 2023.07.04
  • Published : 2023.07.31
Download PDF
⟨ Previous Next ⟩

Abstract

In analyzing the Chinese diaspora, this paper explores losses that are encountered within the family in the nation. It argues that increased social and spatial mobilities that contribute to losses can be reconfigured through the productive lens of supermobility, as Laurence J. C. Ma conceptualizes it. Supermobile identities are significant avenues to consider the way that losses traditionally associated with migration and assimilation are revisited in view of new flows of migration and identification. In examining K. H. Lim's debut novel Written in Black (2014), this study addresses pathways from debilitating losses to productive losses journeyed by the family from the child's perspective. It offers a critical analysis of the Anglophone Bruneian novel in terms of its exclusive portrayal of an ethnic Chinese family. Departing from a fixed notion of home as cultural and physical rootedness, it explores flexible identities that are tied to shifting concepts of belonging. Rather than a magnification of social and spatial losses, the analysis highlights the way that the literary imagination of ethnic Chinese in Brunei Darussalam accommodates progressive ideas of the agency and advancement of the Chinese diaspora as a supermobile community.

Keywords

References

  1. Ang, Ian. 2021. On the Perils of Racialized Chineseness: Race, Nation and Entangled Racisms in China and Southeast Asia. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 45(4): 1-16.
  2. Caruth, Cathy. 1995. Traumatic Awakenings. Performativity and Performance. A. Parker and E. K. Sedgwick, eds. 89-108. London: Routledge.
  3. Caruth, Cathy. 2016. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
  4. Chan, Ying Kit and Chang Yau Hoon. 2021. Introduction: The Historicity of Nation and Contingency of Ethnicity. Contesting Chineseness: Ethnicity, identity, and nation in China and Southeast Asia. Chang Yau Hoon and Ying Kit Chan, eds. 1-22. Singapore: Springer.
  5. Chan, Yuk Wah. 2013. Hybrid Diaspora and Identity-Laundering: A Study of the Return Overseas Chinese Vietnamese in Vietnam. Asian Ethnicity, 14(4): 525-541. https://doi.org/10.1080/14631369.2013.803802
  6. Chan, Yuk Wah. 2020. Asian Perspectives of Migration: A Commentary. Comparative Migration Studies, 8(33): 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-020-00190-5
  7. Cheng, Ann Anlin. 1997. The Melancholy of Race. The Kenyon Review, 19(1): 49-61.
  8. Cheong, Amanda. 2017. Immigration and Shifting Conceptions of Citizenship: The Case of Stateless Chinese Bruneians in Canada. New Chinese Migrations: Mobility, Home, Inspirations. Y. W. Chan and S. Y. Koh, eds. 191-207. London: Routledge.
  9. deVienne, Marie-Sybille. 2015. From the Age of Commerce to the 21st Century. Trans. Emilia Lanier. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press.
  10. Department of Economic Planning and Statistics. 2022. Population Census. Ministry of Finance and Economy. Bandar Seri Begawan.
  11. Deterding, David and Hannah Ming Yit Ho. 2021. An Overview of the Language, Literature and Culture of Brunei Darussalam. Engaging Modern Brunei: Research on Language, Literature and Culture. Hannah Ming Yit Ho and David Deterding, eds. 1-17. Singapore: Springer.
  12. Doyle, Gavin. 2018. Diaspora Blues: Eileen Myles, Melancholia, And the Loss of Irish-American Identity. Irish Studies Review, 26(1): 80-97.
  13. Eng, David L. and Shinhee Han. 2000. A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 10(4): 667-700. https://doi.org/10.1080/10481881009348576
  14. Grzymala-Kazlowska, Aleksandra and Jenny Phillimore. 2018. Introduction: Rethinking Integration. New Perspectives on Adaptation and Settlement in the Era of Super-Diversity. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44(2): 179-196. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2017.1341706
  15. Ho, Debbie Guan Eng. 2021. Chinese Dialects in Brunei: Shift, Maintenance or Loss? Engaging Modern Brunei: Research on Language, Literature and Culture. Hannah Ming Yit Ho and David Deterding, eds. 67-93. Singapore: Springer.
  16. Ho, Debbie Guan Eng and Hannah Ming Yit Ho. 2021. Ethnic Identity and the Southeast Asian Chinese: Voices from Brunei. Contesting Chineseness: Ethnicity, identity, and nation in China and Southeast Asia. Chang Yau Hoon and Ying Kit Chan, eds. 149-166. Singapore: Springer.
  17. Ho, Hannah Ming Yit. 2013. Depathologizing Racial Melancholia in Intergenerational Herstories. Trauma Narratives and Herstories. Sonya Andermahr and Silvia Pellicer-Ortin, eds. 153-168. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  18. Ho, Hannah Ming Yit. 2019. Women Doing Malayness in Brunei Darussalam. Southeast Asian Review of English, 56(2): 147-165. https://doi.org/10.22452/sare.vol56no2.14
  19. Ho, Hannah Ming Yit. 2021a. Chinese Bruneian Identity: Negotiating Individual, Familial and Transnational Selves in Anglophone Bruneian Literature. The Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture, 14(2): 1-34.
  20. Ho, Hannah Ming Yit. 2021b. Localisation of Malay Muslim Identity in Brunei Darussalam: A Modern Nation's Cultural and Economic Goals. Engaging Modern Brunei: Research on Language, Literature and Culture. Hannah Ming Yit Ho and David Deterding, eds. 127-143. Singapore: Springer.
  21. Ho, Hannah Ming Yit. 2022. Beyond Intractability: Muslim Women Negotiating Identities in Brunei Darussalam. Muslim Women's Writing from across South and Southeast Asia. Feroza Jussawalla and Doaa Omran, eds. 240-251. New York: Routledge.
  22. Ho, Hannah Ming Yit and Rinni Amran. 2021. Constructs of the Modern Home: Negotiating Identity in Anglophone Bruneian literature. Engaging Modern Brunei: Research on Language, Literature and Culture. Hannah Ming Yit Ho and David Deterding, eds. 163-175. Singapore: Springer.
  23. Ho, Hannah Ming Yit and Debbie Guan Eng Ho. 2019. Identity in Flux: The Sarong Party Girl's Pursuit of a "Good Life." Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature, 13(2): 146-166.
  24. King, Russell and Anastasia Christou. 2011. Of Counter-Diaspora and Reverse Transnationalism: Return Mobilities to and from the Ancestral Homeland. Mobilities, 6(4): 451-466. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2011.603941
  25. Leggett, Ida Fadzillah. 2020. Girls' Agency Through Supermobility. Childhood, Agency, and Fantasy: Walking in Other Worlds. Ingrid E. Castro, ed. 201-225. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
  26. Lim, K. H. 2014. Written in Black. Singapore: Monsoon Books.
  27. Liu, Shuang. 2015. Identity, Hybridity and Cultural Home: Chinese Migrants and Diaspora in Multicultural Societies. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
  28. Low, Patrick K. C. and Sik Liong Ang. 2012. The Theory and Practice of Confucian Value of Integrity: The Brunei Case Study. International Journal of Business and Management, 7(14): 114-124. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijbm.v7n14p114
  29. Ma, Laurence J. C. 2003. Space, Place and Transnationalism in the Chinese Diaspora. The Chinese Diaspora: Space, Place, Mobility and Identity. Laurence J. C. Ma and Carolyn Cartier, eds. 1-50. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
  30. Mann, Susan. 2000. The Male Bond in Chinese History and Culture. The American Historical Review, 105(5): 1600-1614. https://doi.org/10.2307/2652032
  31. Mrazek, Rudolf. 2002. Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  32. Parliament of Australia. 2010. Australia's Migration Program. https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/1011/AustMigration. (Accessed May 8, 2023).
  33. Phillimore, Jenny, Gracia Liu-Farrer and Nando Sigona. 2021. Migrations and Diversifications in the UK and Japan. Comparative Migration Studies, 9(54): 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-021-00262-0
  34. Sahrifulhafiz, Nur Shawatriqah and Chang Yau Hoon. 2018. The Cultural Identity of the Chinese-Malays in Brunei: Acculturation and Hybridity. Institute of Asian Studies Working Paper Series, 42: 1-29. Gadong: Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam.
  35. Shen, V. 2012. The Concept of Centrality in the Chinese Diaspora. Religion Compass, 6(1): 26-40. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00328.x
  36. Skeldon, Ronald. 2003. The Chinese Diaspora or the Migration of Chinese Peoples? The Chinese Diaspora: Space, Place, Mobility and Identity. Laurence J. C. Ma and Carolyn Cartier, eds. 51-68. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
  37. Tan, Chee Beng. 2013. Introduction. Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Diaspora. C. B. Tan, ed, 1-12. London: Routledge.
  38. Tololyan, Khachig. 1991. The Nation-State and Its Others: In Lieu of a Preface. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 1(1): 3-7.
  39. Ullah, A. K. M. Ahsan and Hannah Ho Ming Yit. 2020. Globalisation and Cultures in Southeast Asia: Demise, Fragmentation, Transformation. Global Society, 35(2): 191-206. https://doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2020.1747992
  40. Vertovec, Steven. 2007. Superdiversity and its Implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(6): 1024-1054. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870701599465
  41. Wang, Gungwu. 2005. Within and Without: Chinese Writers Overseas. Journal of Chinese Overseas, 1(1): 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1163/179325405788639292
  42. Zhou, Min. 1997. Segmented Assimilation: Issues, Controversies and Recent Research on the New Second Generation. International Migration Review, 31(4): 975-1008.