Between the Rainforest and the Word Forest: Nomination of Chang Kuei-hsing for the 2023 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature

Abstract

AbstractThis essay provides an introduction to Taiwanese Malaysian writer Chang Kuei-hsing and his work. First, it summarizes Chang’s personal background and journey as a writer and lists the numerous literary awards he has received over the decades. Next, it offers a brief description of Chang’s aesthetics and styles and underscores the literary influences on his writing. The essay concludes with a survey of critical responses to Chang’s work by scholars in Asia and North America. The purpose of this nomination essay is to highlight the Newman Prize’s recognition of the importance of Sinophone literature such as Chang Kuei-hsing’s writing. It was delivered as a speech at the 2023 Newman Prize Ceremony at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma, on March 3, 2023. Notes1 Su Wei-chen 蘇偉貞, “Chang Kuei-hsing–Summoning Malaysian Memories” (“Zhang Guixing zhaohuan dama jiyi” 張貴興, 召喚大馬記憶), United Daily (Lianhe bao 聯合報), April 20, 1998. English translation is mine.2 Mei Chia-ling, “Explaining ‘Graphs’ and Analyzing ‘Characters’: Zhang Guixing’s Novels and Sinophone Literature’s Cultural Imaginings and Representational Strategies,” trans. Carlos Rojas, in Reading China Against the Grain: Imagining Communities, ed. Carlos Rojas and Mei-hwa Sung (New York: Routledge, 2020).3 Wang, David Der-wei, “Zai qunxiang yu houdang de jiaxiang: Zhang Guixing de Mahua gushi” 在群象與猴黨的家鄉: 張貴興的馬華故事 (“In the Homeland of Elephant Herds and Monkey Gangs: Chang Kuei-hsing’s Sinophone Malaysian Stories”), in Wo sinian de changmian zhong de Nanguo gongzhu 我思念的長眠中的南國公主 (My South Seas Sleeping Beauty) by Chang Kuei-hsing (Zhang Guixing) 張貴興 (Taipei: Maitian Chuban, 2001), 9–38.4 See Bachner, Andrea, “Reinventing Chinese Writing: Zhang Guixing’s Sinographic Translations,” in Global Chinese Literature: Critical Essays, ed. Jing Tsu and David Der-wei Wang (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2010), 177–96; Tan, E. K., Rethinking Chineseness: Translational Sinophone Identities in the Nanyang Literary World (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press), 2013.5 Bernards, Brian, “Plantation and Rainforest: Chang Kuei-hsing and a South Seas Discourse of Coloniality and Nature,” in Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, ed. Shu-mei Shih, Chien-hsin Tsai, and Brian Bernards (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2013), 325–38.6 Huang, Yu-ting, “The Settler Baroque: Decay and Creolization in Chang Kuei-hsing’s Borneo Rainforest Novels,” in Archiving Settler Colonialism, ed. Yu-ting Huang and Rebecca Weaver-Hightower (New York, NY: Routledge, 2019), 238–53.Additional informationNotes on contributorsE. K. TanE. K. Tan is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies in the Department of English, and Department Chair for Asian and Asian American Studies at Stony Brook University. He specializes in the intersections of Anglophone and Sinophone literature, cinema, and culture from Southeast Asia, postcolonial studies, diaspora studies, queer Asian studies, and world literature and cinema. He is the author of Rethinking Chineseness: Translational Sinophone Identities in the Nanyang Literary World. His current book project, “Queer Homecoming: Translocal Remapping of Sinophone Kinship,” proposes the concept of “queer homecoming” as a critical intervention to the normative patrilineal kinship structure in Sinophone societies. He has also begun doing research on another project, tentatively titled “Mandarinization and Its Impact on Sinophone Cultural Production: A Transcolonial Comparison of Ethnic China, Singapore and Taiwan.”