The world is anything but unfamiliar with diaspora: Jewish, African, Armenian, Roma-Gipsy, Filipino/a, Tamil, Irish or Italian, even Japanese. But few have carried so global a resonance as that of China. What, then, of literary-cultural expression, the huge body of fiction which has addressed itself to that plurality of lives and geographies and which has come to be known as “After China”? This collection of essays offers bearings on those written in English, and in which both memory and story are central, spanning the USA to Australia, Canada to the UK, Hong Kong to Singapore, with yet others of more transnational nature. This collection opens with a reprise of woman-authored Chinese American fiction using Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan as departure points. In turn follow readings of the oeuvres of Tan and Frank Chin. A comparative essay takes up novels by Canadian, American and Australian authors from the perspective of migrancy as fracture. Chinese Canada comes into view in accounts of SKY Lee, Wayson Choy, Evelyn Lau and Larissa Lai. Australia under Chinese literary auspices is given a comparative mapping through the fiction of Brian Castro and Ouyang Yu. The English language “China fiction” of Singapore and Hong Kong is located in essays centred, respectively, on Martin Booth and Po Wah Lam, and Hwee Hwee Tan and Colin Cheong. The collection rounds out with portraits of Timothy Mo as British transnational author, a selection of contextual Chinese British stories and art, and the phenomenon of “Chinese Chick Lit” novels. China Fictions/English Language will be of interest to readers drawn both to “After China” as diasporic literary heritage and comparative literature in general.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction Helena GRICE: “The beginning is hers”: The Political and Literary Legacies of Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan Cynthia F. WONG: Asymmetries: Loss and Forgiveness in the Novels of Amy Tan A. Robert LEE: Bad Boy, Godfather, Storyteller: The China Fictions of Frank Chin Deborah L. MADSEN: Bearing the Diasporic Burden: Representations of Suicide in SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Café, Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone, and Hsu-Ming Teo’s Love and Vertigo Rocío G. DAVIS: Chinatown as Diaspora Space in SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Café and Wayson Choy’s The Jade Peony Mary CONDÉ: Canadian Border Crossings: Evelyn Lau and Larissa Lai Nicholas BIRNS: The Earth’s Revenge: Nature, Transfeminism and Diaspora in Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl Nicholas BIRNS: Diaspora Beyond Millenium: Brian Castro, Ouyang Yu, and Chinese Australia Elaine YEE LIN HO: Childhood and The Cultural Memory of Hong Kong: Martin Booth’s Gweilo and Po Wah Lam’s The Locust Hunter Robbie B. H. GOH: The Anxiety of Influences: Dis-Locating Authority, Culture and Identity in the Novels of Colin Cheong Robbie B. H. GOH, Writing “The Global” in Singapore Anglophone Fiction: Language, Vision and Resonance in Hwee Hwee Tan’s Fiction Laura HALL: The Shit Hits The Fan: Timothy Mo’s New World Disorder Diana YEH: Contested Belongings: The Politics and Poetics of Making a Home in Britain Wenche OMMUNDSEN: From China With Love: Chick Lit and The New Crossover Fiction Notes on Contributors