Hong Kong writers have much to say – and not just about democracy and politics
UK magazine Wasafiri dedicates an issue to exploring the city’s literature, and asks whether Hongkongers have a distinctive voice, if a local English writing style exists and if so, whether it has become mainstream
Is there such a thing as “Hong Kong writing” in English – that’s the weighty question British literary journal Wasafiri asks in its latest quarterly edition, devoted entirely to writing from the city.
Launched at the British Council in Hong Kong late last month and entitled “Writing Hong Kong”, the issue contains essays, interviews, reviews, original fiction and poetry. TS Eliot Prize winner Sarah Howe and Commonwealth Poetry Prize and American Book Award winner Shirley Geok-lin Lim are names whose reach clearly transcends the city; others such as Xu Xi, Jennifer Wong and Tammy Ho have established followings in the wider English-speaking world.
It is positioned as rather a serious and weighty undertaking: the essays are academic and intellectual in tone. These, plus the interviews and other non-creative prose outweigh the original poetry and fiction featured.
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The journal’s editors, Jeffrey Mather and Florian Stadtler, say its blend of non-fiction articles, short fiction, poetry, and reviews is “the perfect forum through which to consider new critical and creative approaches that directly engage with Hong Kong’s geography, history, politics and poetics”.
One approach to the question Wasafiri poses is to shrug and take the position that Hong Kong writing is relatively easy to recognise – we know it when we see it – and a Hong Kong writer is one who produces Hong Kong writing and, second, has some concrete physical relation to the place.
Tammy Ho, in her essay “Something Sets Us Looking for a Place: Poetry of Jennifer Wong and Sarah Howe”, (gratifyingly) quotes my review of Howe’s debut collection Loop of Jade: “If there is such a thing as Hong Kong literature in English, Loop of Jade comes pretty close to it. And if there isn’t, Hong Kong would do well to claim Sarah Howe for its own regardless of what anyone else thinks.”
