Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Introduction

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Southeast Asian Woman Writes Back

Part of the book series: Asia in Transition ((AT,volume 6))

Abstract

The study of postcolonial fiction works produced by Southeast Asian women remains under-researched as a site of investigation into the representational politics of gender, identity and nation in Southeast Asian societies on several fronts. Very often, research into Southeast Asian literary and cultural productions excludes gender as a point of inquiry; or else, the analysis is restricted to literary productions in individual countries.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Race and ethnicity are often at the forefront of numerous edited volumes and monographs on Southeast Asian literature, including Salmon (1981), Suryadinata (1993), Wong (2002), Lo (2004), Lim (2008), Goh et al. (2009), Goh (2011), Groppe (2013), and Tan (2013).

  2. 2.

    As many literary works are produced in the national language or native/mother tongue, they pose a serious challenge to international scholars who either rely on translated writings or have the ability to read in the local language(s) in order to access these literatures. Consequently, the analysis of gender in literature is often confined to studies of individual countries, or produced as book chapters and journal articles. Monograph examples include Nor Faridah and Quayum (2003), Arimbi (2009), Galam (2009), Pison (2010), and Hellwig (2012).

  3. 3.

    These studies repeatedly highlight the ambivalent position of women as gendered citizens. As Yuval-Davis (2003) notes: “On the one hand, … they often symbolize the collectivity, unity, honour and the raison d’etre of specific national and ethnic projects, like going to war. On the other hand, however, they are often excluded from the collective ‘we’ of the body politic, and retain an object rather than a subject position. In this sense the construction of womanhood has a property of Otherness” (19).

  4. 4.

    Heng and Devan (1995) provide an incisive analysis of Singapore’s eugenicist interest, seen in the government’s interventionist strategies on race and gender through the control of women’s bodies and reproduction rates.

  5. 5.

    Refer to Kaur (2007) for an example of how the governments of Singapore and Malaysia, the two main employers in the region, police domestic workers.

  6. 6.

    Published research on this topic includes Sarker and Niyogi De (2003) and Tadiar (2004, 2009).

  7. 7.

    We include the volume here because, with the exception of one chapter on China, all the other chapters examine Southeast Asian contexts.

  8. 8.

    See Walby (1996, 251–2) for her discussion of the criticism (that feminism is Western in origin) levelled by third world feminists against first world feminism.

  9. 9.

    This global phenomenon, seen not only in Third World countries but also in developed nations like the UK and the USA, attests to the pervasive and insidious “othering” of feminists through misleading stereotypes and discourses in popular, patriarchal imaginaries.

  10. 10.

    It should also be noted that independent cinema and new media in the region have managed to carve out a niche for LGBTQ narratives. Indeed, what scholarship has been done on queer Southeast Asia in recent years, and it has been significant, has mostly been dominated by cinema and new media studies. See Ng (1999), Berry et al. (2003), and Murtagh (2013).

  11. 11.

    It is illegal to be homosexual in four Southeast Asian countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei and Myanmar. Refer to Mosbergen (2015) for details.

References

  • Aguilar, Carmencita T. 1990. Women in politics in the Philippines. Philippine Political Science Journal 16 (31–32): 39–74.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alexander, M. Jacqui, and Chandra Talpade Mohanty (eds.). 1997. Feminist genealogies, colonial legacies, democratic futures. New York and London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arimbi, Diah Ariani. 2009. Reading contemporary Indonesian Muslim women writers: Representation, identity and religion of Muslim women in Indonesian fiction. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. 1989. The Empire writes back: Theory and practice in post-colonial literatures. London and New York: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, Linda Rae, and Sharyn Graham Davies (eds.). 2015. Sex and sexualities in contemporary Indonesia: Sexual politics, health, diversity and representations. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berry, Chris, Fran Martin, and Audrey Yue (eds.). 2003. Mobile cultures: New media in queer Asia. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bhabha, Homi K. 1990. DissemiNation: Time, narrative, and the margins of the modern nation. In Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha, 291–322. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blackburn, Susan. 2004. Women and the state in modern Indonesia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Blackburn, Susan. 2009. Has gender analysis been mainstreamed in the study of Southeast Asian politics? In Gender trends in Southeast Asia: Women now, women in the future, ed. Theresa W. Devasahayam, 53–72. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blackburn, Susan, and Helen Ting (eds.). 2013. Women in Southeast Asian nationalist movements: A biographical approach. Singapore: NUS Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boehmer, Elleke. 2005. Stories of women: Gender and narrative in the postcolonial nation. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Chan, Jasmine S. 2000. The status of women in a patriarchal state: The case of Singapore. In Women in Asia: Tradition, modernity and globalization, eds. Louise Edwards, and Mina Roces, 39–58. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chin, Grace V.S. 2005/2006. Expressions of self-censorship: Ambivalence and difference in Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese women’s prose writings in English. South-East Asia: A Multidisciplinary Journal 6 (1): 13–34.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chin, Grace V.S. 2006. The anxieties of authorship in Malaysian and Singaporean writings in English: Locating the English language writer and the question of freedom in the postcolonial era. Postcolonial Text 2 (4): 1–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chin, Grace V.S. 2016. Bruneian women’s writing as an emergent minor literature in English. In Special issue: English in Brunei Darussalam, eds. James McLellan, and Grace V.S. Chin. World Englishes 35 (4): 587–601.

    Google Scholar 

  • Day, Tony. 2002. Fluid iron: State formation in Southeast Asia. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Enloe, Cynthia. 1989. Bananas, beaches and bases: Making feminist sense of international politics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Galam, Roderick G. 2009. The promise of the nation: Gender, history, and nationalism in contemporary Ilokano literature. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goh, Daniel P.S., Matilda Gabrielpillai, Philip Holden, and Khoo Gaik Cheng (eds.). 2009. Race and multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goh, Robbie B.H. (ed.). 2011. Narrating race: Asia, (trans)nationalism, social change. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Groppe, Alison M. 2013. Sinophone Malaysian Literature: Not made in China. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hau, Caroline S. 2000. Necessary fictions: Philippine literature and the nation, 1946–1980. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hau, Caroline S. 2004. On the subject of the nation: Filipino writings from the margin, 1981–2004. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hellwig, Tineke. 2012. Women and Malay voices: Undercurrent murmurings in Indonesia’s colonial past. New York: Peter Lang.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Heng, Geraldine, and Janadas Devan. 1995. State fatherhood: The politics of nationalism, sexuality, and race in Singapore. In Bewitching women, pious men: Gender and body politics in Southeast Asia, eds. Aihwa Ong, and Michael G. Peletz, 195–215. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1990. Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jayawardena, Kumari. 1986. Feminism and nationalism in the third world. London: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaur, Amarjit. 2007. International labour migration in Southeast Asia: Governance of migration and women domestic workers. Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context 15. http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue15/kaur.htm. Accessed August 25, 2016.

  • Kee, Thuan Chye. 2000. Sharing a commonwealth in Malaysia. Kunapipi: Journal of Post-Colonial Writing 22 (1): 4–6.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koh, Tai Ann. 1989. Self, family and the state: Social mythology in the Singapore novel in English. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 20 (2): 273–287.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leong, Liew Geok. 2000. Dissenting voices: Political engagements in the Singaporean novel in English. World Literature Today 74 (2): 285–292.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lim, David C.L. (ed.). 2008. Overcoming passion for race in Malaysian cultural studies. Amsterdam: Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lim, Shirley Geok-lin. 1988. Voices from the hinterland: Plurality and identity in the national literatures in English from Malaysia and Singapore. World Literature Written in English 28 (1): 145–153.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lim, Shirley Geok-lin. 1993. Nationalism and literature: English-language writing from the Philippines and Singapore. Quezon City, Philippines: New Day.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lim, Shirley Geok-lin. 1994. Writing S.E./Asia in English: Against the grain, focus on Asian-English-language literature. London: Skoob Books Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lo, Jacqueline. 2004. Staging nation: English language theatre in Malaysia and Singapore. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lyons, Lenore. 2004. A state of ambivalence: The feminist movement in Singapore. Leiden: Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • McClintock, Anne. 1991. ‘No longer in a future heaven’: Women and nationalism in South Africa. Transition 51: 104–123.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McClintock, Anne. 1993. Family feuds: Gender, nationalism and the family. Feminist Review 44: 61–80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (eds.). 1991. Third world women and the politics of feminism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Montrose, Louis A. 1989. Professing the renaissance: The poetics and politics of culture. In The new historicism, ed. H. Aram Veeser, 15–36. New York and London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morse, Ruth. 1991. A case of (mis)taken identity: Politics and aesthetics in some recent Singaporean novels. In Asian voices in English, eds. Mimi Chan, and Roy Harris, 131–145. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mosbergen, Dominique. 2015. Being LGBT in Southeast Asia: Stories of abuse, survival, and tremendous courage. The Huffington Post, November 10. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lgbt-in-southeast-asia_us_55e406e1e4b0c818f6185151/. Accessed December 15, 2016.

  • Murtagh, Ben. 2013. Genders and sexualities in Indonesian cinema: Constructing gay, lesbi and waria identities on screen. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ng, King Kang. 1999. The rainbow connection: The internet and the Singapore gay community. Singapore: KangCuBine Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nor Faridah Abdul Manaf, and Mohamad A. Quayum. 2003. Colonial to global: Malaysian women’s writing in English 1940s–1990s, 2nd ed. Kuala Lumpur: International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ong, Aihwa, and Michael G. Peletz (eds.). 1995. Bewitching women, pious men: Gender and body politics in Southeast Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Shaughnessy, Kate. 2009. Gender, state and social power in contemporary Indonesia: Divorce and marriage law. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peletz, Michael G. 2012. Gender, sexuality, and the state in Southeast Asia. The Journal of Asian Studies 71 (4): 895–917.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pison, Ruth J.L. 2010. Dangerous liaisons: Sexing the nation in novels by Philippine women writers, 1993–2006. Diliman, Quezon City: The University of the Philippines Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pye, Lucian W. 1985. Asian power and politics: The cultural dimensions of authority. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ray, Sangeeta. 2000. En-gendering India: Woman and nation in colonial and post-colonial narratives. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Renan, Ernest. 1990. What is a nation? In Nation and narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha, 8–22. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salmon, Claudine. 1981. Literature in Malay by the Chinese of Indonesia: A provisional annotated bibliography. Paris, France: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sarker, Sonita, and Esha Niyogi De (eds.). 2003. Trans-status subjects: Gender in the globalization of South and Southeast Asia. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sen, Krishna, and Maila Stivens (eds.). 1998. Gender and power in affluent Asia. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stivens, Maila (ed.). 1991. Why gender matters in Southeast Asian politics. Clayton: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suryadinata, Leo (ed.). 1993. Chinese adaptation and diversity: Essays on society and literature in Indonesia, Malaysia & Singapore. Singapore: Singapore University Press, National University of Singapore.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suryakusuma, Julia I. 1998. The state and sexuality in New Order Indonesia. In Fantasizing the feminine in Indonesia, ed. Laurie J. Sears, 92–119. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tadiar, Neferti. 1997. Domestic bodies of the Philippines. SOJOURN 12 (2): 153–191.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tadiar, Neferti Xina M. 2004. Fantasy-production: Sexual economies and other Philippine consequences for the new world order. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tadiar, Neferti Xina M. 2009. Things fall away: Philippine historical experience and the makings of globalization. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Tan, E.K. 2013. Rethinking Chineseness: Translational sinophone identities in the Nanyang literary world. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thumboo, Edwin. 1988. Literature and liberation: Five essays from Southeast Asia. Manila, Philippines: Solidaridad Publishing House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tope, Lily Rose R. 1998. (Un)framing Southeast Asia: Nationalism and the post-colonial text in English in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walby, Sylvia. 1996. Woman and nation. In Mapping the nation, ed. Gopal Balakrishnan, 235–254. London and New York: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wieringa, Saskia. 2003. The birth of the New Order state in Indonesia: Sexual politics and nationalism. Journal of Women’s History 15 (1): 70–91.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wolfe, Diane L. 1998. Javanese factory daughters: Gender, the state, and industrial capitalism. In Fantasizing the feminine in Indonesia, ed. Laurie J. Sears, 140–162. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wong, Yoon Wah. 2002. Post-colonial Chinese literatures in Singapore and Malaysia. Singapore: National University of Singapore/Global Publishing.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1997. Gender and nation. London: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yuval-Davis, Nira. 2003. Nationalist projects and gender relations. Nar. umjet. 40 (1): 9–36.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yuval-Davis, Nira, and Floya Anthias (eds.). 1989. Woman-Nation-State. London: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia

    Grace V. S. Chin

  2. Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Jalan Tungku Link, Brunei Darussalam

    Kathrina Mohd Daud

Authors
  1. Grace V. S. Chin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Kathrina Mohd Daud
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Grace V. S. Chin .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia

    Grace V. S. Chin

  2. Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Jalan Tungku Link, Brunei Darussalam

    Kathrina Mohd Daud

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Chin, G.V.S., Mohd Daud, K. (2018). Introduction. In: Chin, G., Mohd Daud, K. (eds) The Southeast Asian Woman Writes Back. Asia in Transition, vol 6. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7065-5_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7065-5_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-7064-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-7065-5

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation