This book is an extended study of the author's doctoral research on British Chinese literature.
As I had declared in my previous investigation of British Chinese writings, the existing literary productions remain a small number, comparing to its American counterpart; however, since the political, social and historical factors affecting this group of literature are unique, British Chinese publications deserve close examination.Since British Chinese immigration history has been thoroughly surveyed by Benton and Gomez in their work The Chinese in Britain, 1800-Present, the latest and most complete survey of British Chinese history so far, I will omit the historical panorama.
Moreover, as I have studied the tradition of British Chinese writings in my doctoral research, I will also overlook this part.
It is noteworthy, however, that the research on British Chinese history and writers reveals the heterogeneity within British Chinese people.
The backgrounds of British Chinese authors are diverse; their upbringings inevitably affect their writings, which represent the hybridity of the Chinese British.Benton and Gomez suggest that British Chinese people are: divided by class, language, place of origin, period of arrival, and reason for coming, as well as by physical segregation within Britain. ... They lack common genealogies or symbols, boundary markers of an ethnic community shared with identities.
They lack the bonds of a common religion, ... the community is heterogeneous and individual identities are increasingly hybridised.The heterogeneity of the British Chinese is significant; their origins can be traced back to Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, other British colonies, and those diasporic Chinese in Southeast Asia.
One significant example is the poetess Meiling Jin, who moved to Britain from the Caribbeans.
Hybridity is indeed an important characteristic of the British Chinese.
Wai-ki E. Luk confirms that the Chinese are "e;by no means a homogeneous ethnic group.
It is instead a complex compound group that shelters under a single umbrella census term of 'Chinese'"e; (209).
It is partial and questionable to generalize all the Chinese in Britain; therefore, in this book, I have deliberately tried to highlight their feature of hybridity by selecting works written by three British Chinese authors with varied backgrounds to specify different issues relevant to dissimilar British Chinese communities.
The first author under review is Liu Hong, who previously lived in China before enrolling in a Britain university to escape the communist regime.
Her book The Magpie Bridge deals with matrilineage through the distinctive theme of garden and is worth scrutnization.
Timothy Mo is the second author in this book, who was born to an English mother and a Chinese father.
Mo travelled from the former British colony Hong Kong to the United Kingdom and several of his works reflect the colonialization.
Sour Sweet will be discussed in this study as it is a work much acclaimed, and most importantly, it mirrors the British Chinese society in the 1960s.
The third writer, Helen Tse, is a third-generation British Chinese woman.
She grew up in her parents' take-away shop but ends up establishing a Chinese restaurant in Manchester.
The degradation to the catering trade, as commented by her British Chinese peers, is in fact a result of her acknowledgement of the tradition handed down by her ancestors.
Sweet Mandarin recounts how Tse and her family came to settle down in Britain and this migration exemplifies British Chinese immigration history.Miri Song asserts that British Chinese people "e;constitute the third largest minority group"e; in the United Kingdom (99).
Nevertheless, the number of publications by and research on the British Chinese is small.
The invisibility of the Chinese in Britain clouds the subjectivity of the individuals of the community, in which the women occupy an inferior status than men do.
According to Sau-ling Cynthia Wong, Asian American Women are "e;ultrafeminized"e; because they are oppressed in terms of both race and gender (112).
Heidi Safia Mirza articulates a similar concern with an addition of class: "e;The invisibility of black women speaks of the separate narrative constructions of race, gender and class: in a racial discourse, where the subject is [white]; in a gendered discourse, where the subject is [male]; and a class discourse, where race has no place"e; (3).
This research, therefore, has devoted to individualizing the women of Chinese origin in British Chinese writings to endow them with personality and particularity.
In this way, I hope to bring to light the voice of British Chinese women, of what they experience and how they feel.
Their selfhood needs to be manifested, and the literary works singled out in this study make this happen.Most of the women in the works selected for discussion experience the sense of loss and their subjectivity is blurred.
For example, Orchid in Magpie Bridge was intended to be forgotten by her daughter, who assumed that she eloped with her lover and deserted the family.
In this novel, the mother is a character who did not emerge as a subject but was described and imagined.
It is only when she finally writes back to her daughter at the end of the story that the true story of this woman is unmasked and she becomes alive.
Another example is Mui in Sour Sweet, who confined herself at her sister's house and would not step out to the outer world.
Likewise, Lily in Sweet Mandarin lost herself when she migrated to England.
Working as an amah, she led a solitary life in the countryside, around her was no one who spoke the same language nor shared the same culture with her.
For both of them, the loss of selfhood is a consequence of the cultural and language unfamiliarity.How a woman recognizes herself is relevant to her formation of identity.
The immigrant women in these three works, while identify with their Chinese cultural origin, experience cultural conflicts when they are in Britain.
On one hand, their home of origin has changed over the years of their absence; on the other, they constantly face cultural contradiction in their adopted country.
In addition, the British-born Chinese women in Sweet Mandarin undergo a difficult time coming to terms with their cultural identity.
Straddling between two worlds, they are trying hard to clarify where they belong.
For women in British Chinese writings, their hybridity is noteworthy, their subjectivity needs to be recognized, and their identity is exposed to cultural confrontations and subject to transformation.
This book is, therefore, aims to analyse Liu Hong The Magpie Bridge, Timothy Mo's Sour Sweet, and Helen Tse's Sweet Mandarin, from the perspectives of subjectivity, identity and hybridity.
