▍內容簡介：

The first English-language monograph centering on late twentieth- and early twenty-first century Sinophone Southeast Asian literature, and in particular that of Singapore and Malaysia, E. K. Tan’s interdisciplinary Rethinking Chineseness: Translational Sinophone Identities in the Nanyang Literary World makes important contributions to Sinophone studies, Chinese studies, and Southeast Asian Studies, as well as to scholarship on diaspora, comparative literature, and world literature. Well-written and researched, Tan’s volume focuses on the relationship among the Nanyang Chinese, their original homelands of Borneo, Malaysia, and Singapore, and their imaginary homeland of China, through the writings of Kuo Pao Kun (郭宝崑), Chang Kuei-hsing (张贵兴), and Vyvyane Loh (罗惠贤), all of whom have been neglected in English-language scholarship. Of particular concern to Tan is how, by destabilizing notions of “Chineseness,” these writers have “endeavored to reclaim a sense of belonging to the homeland” (3). Rethinking Chineseness centers on the themes of loss and displacement, discussing how and why “Chineseness as an identity category is repeatedly reconstructed in the works of Nanyang Chinese as a way to suggest broader implications of Sinophone cultures in the age of globalization” (3). Tan demonstrates how Nanyang Chinese writers use narrative to evaluate their complex and multifaceted identities.