Jennifer Wong, Identity, Home and Writing Elsewhere in Contemporary Chinese Diaspora Poetry, Bloomsbury, 2023.
When Jennifer Wong interviewed the poet Li-Young Lee about his family trauma of forced migrations, first from China to Indonesia, then to the United States, he reflected, "[W]hat does 'home' mean in such circumstances?" In each place his family tried to settle, they were met with hostility and were scapegoated when political tensions rose. "Everything, except safety. Everything, except security. Everything, except membership that confers privileges or protection. Everything, except a place one may return for rest or sanctuary" (46).
The painful mixture of longing for home and resignation to the reality of perpetual alienation captures the paradoxical tension in the concept of home expressed by many contemporary Chinese diaspora poets. Jennifer Wong's 2023 book Identity, Home and Writing Elsewhere in Contemporary Chinese Diaspora Poetry unsettles and complicates the concepts of "identity", "home", and "diaspora" by challenging their conventional definitions and expanding the meaning of each.
Instead of theorising these concepts from the framework of existing linguistic, geographical, and racial distinctions, Wong seeks to understand Chinese diasporic poetry from the point of view of "inner emigration". She interviews many of the poets anthologised in her book and asks them about their experiences of home and their understanding of identity. As an anthology of contemporary poetry, this book breaks theoretical grounds and is remarkably intimate. The reader can get to know each poet as a friend as Wong unfolds their life stories, shares their family photos, and selects lines of their poetry for close reading and analysis.
Born in Hong Kong and currently residing in England, Jennifer Wong is herself both a poet and a literary critic. She keenly understands the complexity of "home" in the 21st century. Wong's own experience of home has been one of transgenerational migrations. Her parents were immigrants to Hong Kong, and she is now raising a family far from her own city of origin. In her poetry and writing, she repeatedly contrasts the concept of "home" in the early 20th century and the present day. In 2020, when her home city of Hong Kong was metamorphosing into a place beyond her recognition, she wrote the following lines in her poem titled "Ba Jin (1904–2005)".
Happy are those who stay silent and notice nothing, feel
nothing. Unhappy are those who are young at heart.
Cursed are those who battle with the giant.
In this anthology, Wong presents a wide array of contemporary poets whose languages and identities transcend familiar boundaries of language and race. The first six chapters cover six poets—Bei Dao, Li-Young Lee, Marilyn Chin, Hannah Lowe, Sarah Howe, and Mary Jean Chan—with one chapter devoted to each. Chapter seven focuses on a young generation of Anglophone poets based in the UK. Chapter eight discusses a pantheon of Hong Kong poets from the post-war period to the present, spanning three generations. Wong finishes the book with an appendix that contains interviews she conducted with some of the poets, allowing their diverse voices and insights enrich the multifaceted concepts of "home", "identity", and "diaspora".
The poets write in Chinese and/or English, crafting alternative identities. The link between them is their varying degrees of Chinese heritage, and the fact that they reside and publish outside mainland China. Although these poets' connections with their homelands are fractured, they establish a kind of belonging through their poetry. They express uneasiness with reductive notions of identity and home, and they forge a new paradigm of belonging—at home in multiple places. These poets celebrate their mixed cultural and racial heritages by mixing languages and poetic forms, creating a third space characterised by hybridity and non-conformity.=
As an anthology of diaspora Chinese poetry, one strength of the book is the inclusion of young poets. Apart from well-established poets of international renown, like Bei Dao and Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Wong introduces many new voices of diaspora poets, including UK-based L. Kiew and Jinhao Xie, and Hong Kong poets Antony Huen, Jason Eng Hun Lee, and Tim Tim Cheng. On the other hand, the anthology features chiefly Anglophone poets residing in Hong Kong, the UK, and the United States, which makes up but a small percentage of the vast Chinese diaspora poetic voices. Poets are generally introduced in chronological order, based on the years of their notable publications. Although it would be helpful for posterity if the author had provided the year of birth of the poets featured.
In Wong's book, the diasporic is not peripheral. Poets represent an emerging global consciousness that can no longer be contained within a specific geographical border or expressed in full through a single language or cultural tradition. In a hyperconnected world in which technology is erasing distance and migration is becoming a lifestyle, these poets are transcending traditional boundaries of language and race, forging a new concept of home and identity that is rooted in lived experience.
How to cite: Zhang, Emma. "Poetry of the Nomads: Jennifer Wong's Identity, Home and Writing Elsewhere in Contemporary Chinese Diaspora Poetry." Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 2 Jul. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/07/02/nomads.
Emma Zhang teaches in the Language Centre at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research interests include comparative literature and comparative mythology. Her doctoral dissertation Domination, Alienation and Freedom in Ha Jin's Novels (2015) analyses Ha Jin's novels in connection with contemporary Chinese society. Her other works include "Father's Journey into Night" (2013), "No End in Sight—the myth of Nezha and the ultra-stable authoritarian political order in China" (2018), and "The Taming of the White Snake—The oppression of female sexuality in the Legend of the White Snake". She is currently working on translating ancient Chinese legends Nezha and The Legend of the White Snake. [All contributions by Emma Zhang.]
RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS
No comments:
Post a Comment