Articulating Female Citizenship in Norsiah Gapar’s Pengabdian

Abstract

The first female Bruneian to have won the SEA Asia Write Award in 2009, Norsiah Haji Gapar is unique in Bruneian literature for both her medium—the novel and short story rather than poetry—and her consideration of contemporary female issues in her fiction. Her significance is endorsed at the national level with her first novel, Pengabdian (Submission), which occupies a position in the national curriculum for Malay literature at the secondary school level; to date, she is the only local female writer to be accorded such an acknowledgement of importance. Published in 1987, and the winner of a national novel-writing competition held to commemorate Brunei’s independence in 1984, Pengabdian holds a prominent place in the Bruneian literary canon. This chapter will consider the construction of female citizenship in Pengabdian as a response to national, patriarchal anxieties about national identity, which is encapsulated in the national ideology of Malay Islamic Monarchy.