The institutionalization of Asian American literary studies in Taiwan: a diasporic Sinophone Malaysian perspective
TEE Kim Tong
ABSTRACT This paper aims to discuss the institutionalization of the studies of Chinese American literature/Asian American literature in Taiwan from the perspective of a Sinophone Malaysian, focusing on the motivation of local scholars to work on Chinese American or Asian American literary works. I argue that claiming that it is the ethnic, cultural and affective affinities that manifests the pertinency of Chinese American or Asian American literature as the object of study might fail to see the cultural heterogeneity and generational difference siting in the racialized space within such texts. In reading Chinese American or Asian American literature, while a Taiwanese scholar might underline Asian affinities, a diasporic Sinophone Malaysian would stress the textual difference in linguistic medium and multiculturalism within the American context. Furthermore, it is significant to observe comparatively Sinophone literary texts of Chinese American or Asian American produced in Taiwan and Sinophone Malaysian literary works published in Taiwan.
Author’s biography
TEE Kim Tong, Ph.D. (National Taiwan University), is Associate Professor at National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. He is author of Studying Southeast Asian Chinese: Essays on Chinese Malaysian Literature and Cultural Identity 南洋論述：馬華文學與文化屬性 (Taipei: Rye Field Publications, 2003) and On Sinophone Malaysian Literature 馬來西亞華語語系文學(Petaling Jaya: Got One Publisher, 2011) and editor of several collections of essays on Sinophone Malaysian literature.