Qiu Shuyuan was better known in Singapore as a literary pioneer in late Qing Dynasty. He called himself a ‘Singapore Resident’ while always regarded himself as a Chinese nationality. As most traditional scholars, he defended the tradition and cared about the state of the country, and actively supported the Hundred Days’ Reform. He highly concerned about the situation of his motherland. He helped to develop political consciousness and cultural literacy among the Chinese immigrants through the founding of Chinese press, literature societies and Chinese schools. He was one of the political and cultural movement leaders of the Nanyang Chinese. The Poems of Qiu Shuyuan is his work. His poems contain strong personal feelings and had their propagative and demonstrative influences over the cultural circle of Nanyang Chinese. This article is to examine Qiu’s homeland feelings and the refuge of his homeland concern and self-identity.

Hsu Yun-Tsiao (许云樵, 1905-1981), or Hsu Yu, was born in Jiangshu Province of China. He left for South East Asia in 1931 to involve himself in historical research as well as editorial and education activities. Hsu devoted all his energy to Southeast Asia Studies, and gained great reputation with significant research outcomes, especially in the research area of Southeast Asia studies. This paper looks into Hsu Yun-Tsiao’s massive travel genre and topographical writings, examines the literature traits influenced by his living and travelling experiences from his homeland to Southeast Asia as well as his conscious and unconscious sense of history in the text and his life, all of which are in fact a way of identity construction. To a certain extent, travelogues which emphasized on rational narration and transmission of information represented by Hsu, restoring and testifying some collective experiences of Chinese migrants in Southeast Asia after World War II.

In this new century, the ideology of literary history is no longer stringent; as a result, the geographical view of literature should be changed accordingly. When we agree that Sarawak Chinese literature cannot be categorised under Mahua literature, can we then classify all Sarawak Chinese literature into one category? This is the main argument of the paper. This paper consists of three parts. The first part discusses what constitutes Sarawak Chinese literature with enhanced local characteristics, in reference to Bornean features. The second part divides Sarawakian Chinese authors in two groups, namely “Taiwan-based authors” and “local authors” and further examines how regional experience affects their works. It is, however, difficult to distinguish which part is affected by Taiwan’s influence and which part is their self-creation, especially in this era of globalisation. In spite of that, we can narrow the scope of study down to the works of rainforest writing of Sarawakian Chinese writers to gain a more refined study. Therefore, through a comparison between the fictional works of Li Yong Ping 李永平 and Chang Kuei Hsin 张贵兴, who have long since taken up Taiwanese citizenship, and rainforest writing of local authors, the differences and individual complexity between both will then be investigated and deliberated. Finally, the dialogues or contrasts between Sarawak Chinese literature in Taiwan and local Sarawak Chinese literature will be analysed.

Chinese Malaysian Literature is not only made in Malaysia but there are a number of transnational literary productions which took place in Taiwan, Hong Kong and others places abroad. This research endeavors to discuss Chinese Malaysian Literature in the transnational context and the construction of its canon. By incorporating an actual subject (Li Yongping) and supplementing the research with the framework which combine the model of speech communication and model of transnational communication, this paper aims to make inferences on the evolution of Chinese Malaysian literary canon from its roots, and gradually deduce the basic elements in the process of canonisation. It highlights the phenomena of interaction between the different literary systems which cross-system, cross-boundary, and cross-context were also involved, and the relevant key medium in the encoding and transcoding processes. In the different stage of interaction, we can see that the relation between an addressee and an addresser is not simply a passive one, as both entities are able to mutually interact. By analysing the distribution of Li Yongping’s works in a transnational context, these elements in the construction of Malaysian Chinese literary canon in Taiwan can be clarified.

Literature as a common reading material has been accepted as authoritative forms that carve and shape the thinking of children. They are called children literature and treated as an important source of formal writings. Regardless of race, colour, and education, every child is in needs of this form of literature to shape up their thinking that would assist in their development. In a multiracial nation like Malaysia, it is even important to foster better understanding and acceptance among each and other through such literature. Being a multiracial and multicultural nation, with each racial component having its own cultural traditions and practices, Malaysia faces a greater challenge to come into a term of agreeing of what it ought to be treated as Malaysian tradition in children’s literature? To our wonder, among the four main languages trending literature, the Malay, English and Chinese version of children literature almost available with notable significances, but the children literature in Tamil is yet recognized or made known for acceptance for in proper. Without acknowledging the true representation of the genre, we could not be painted off the Malaysian literature in whole. This study is offering an alternative by showing how far the literature for children in Tamil has been developed to be part of the Malaysian children’s literary tradition. Its journey and accomplishments in the past 200 years of the trajectory are revisited to cast the trending nature of Malaysian Children Literature in Tamil.

A Malaya-born Chinese writer, 王润华 [Wong Yoon Wah, 1941–] is internationally recognized as a leading figure in the Chinese literature of Southeast Asia. This paper aims to elucidate how Wong represents “南洋” [the South Seas] by focusing on four interlinked dimensions, i.e. colonial history and decolonization, the Cold War, the Chinese diaspora and the localized identity, and postcolonial modernity. Combining textual analysis and conceptualization with contextualization, this paper intends to re-read Wong’s literary works through the looking glass of postcolonial and diaspora studies. By drawing theoretical discourse from Sinophone studies to Wong’s case, this paper illuminates his blindness and insight as he addresses the cultural identity of Chinese Diaspora. In the conclusion, the paper holds that Wong’s literary works paves the path for rewriting the South Seas in an age of globalization.

In The Souls of Black Folks (1903) W.B. Du Bois examines the Negro (black) problem of double consciousness. Double consciousness is a psychological condition exhibited by blacks as a result of their interaction with the white race. This concept was originally proper to the social sciences especially psychology, where the psychological conditions of real human beings were analyzed. With Du Bois, double consciousness describes a peculiar condition common among the blacks in America due to their racial orientation. In other to assert their self esteem, blacks in America have to resort to the strategy of double consciousness which according to Cook is the “conscious splitting of the inner self in an attempt to create a character that would be accepted into the mainstream society” (Cook 1). Contrary to Du Bois assertion, this paper sets out to discuss double consciousness as it is represented in two novels: Never far from Nowhere and Call me by my Rightful Name. Never far from Nowhere is concerned with the experience of Jamaican immigrants in London and Call me by my Rightful Name with the experience of African American in America. This paper interrogates the phenomenon of double consciousness through the categorization of psychoanalysis of Freud, because double consciousness deals with mind perception. The result of this paper shows that double consciousness is a problem of black man wherever he is in contact with the White race; it is not a peculiar problem to blacks in America as posited by Du Bois.

The present study is an exploration of the concept of transcendence in Karma Cola by Gita Mehta. It is a deconstructive investigation aimed at delegitimizing and destabilizing the grand narrative of the innate nature of the human self as it operates within the framework of a discourse that generates, operates, disseminates and manages myths about eastern spiritual tradition. The theoretical tool for illustrating the insincerity of the notion of self-actualisation and the consequential Angst is, for the present study, existentialism.

This paper rediscovers Archibald Forder as a forgotten American Orientalist, who is surprisingly left out of account by postcolonial critics. Forder’s travel books record his life, travel experiences, and missionary works in Trans Jordan between the years 1891 and 1920. This paper illuminates how Forder’s depictions of the Arabs and “going native” process are in tune with an inherent ambivalence and contradiction of the colonial discourse. While Said (1978) iterates the Western negative representations of the Orient, Bhabha (1994) theorizes the colonized’s mimicry of the colonizer. In building on Said’s monolithic discourse, this paper argues that Forder’s postcolonial discourse oscillates between positive and negative portrayals of the Arabs. Similarly, in reframing Bhabha’s theory of the colonized’s mimicry of the colonizer, this paper explains how a colonizer goes native. In so doing, this essay analyzes Forder’s ambivalence and “going native” in terms of his adoption of Arabic food manners, and transliterations of specific Arabic words that focus on his identification with Bedouin dress and specific social practices in With the Arabs in Tent and Town; Ventures among the Arabs in Desert, Tent, and Town; and In Brigands’ Hands and Turkish Prisons 1914-1918.

This paper focuses on ethical changes among Tanka (短歌) poets in Joseon literary circles on the Korean peninsula during the Japanese colonial era. Joseon Japanese poetical literary circles lasted some 40 years from the beginning of the 1900s until Japan’s defeat, changing across periods. The main characteristic of these circles was the emergence of local Joseon forms of Tanka between late 1920s to the 1930, at the height of the Joseon literary circles. This was the period when the exploration of Joseon was carried out by the Tanka poets, with multiple publications of Tanka magazines issuing collections of Joseon-related Tanka. However, in the 1930s, the number of Joseon Japanese poetical circles shrank, and Tanka became identified with national literature in the lead-up to the Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War. These events influenced both the flow of the Joseon literary circles and the creative beliefs in individual Tanka poets. Based on these observations, this paper focuses on Ryo Michihisa, a leading Tanka poet in Joseon literary circles. The analysis of Tanka reveals a wavering of individual ethical and creative beliefs towards the war that manifested between local aesthetics in Joseon literary circles and national literature.