Han Suyin's Cold War fictions
Life-writing, intimacy, and decolonization
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2179447 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alex Tickell (0000-0001-9271-3873) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 241-254 |
| Publication date | 2021-03-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17449855.2021.1894684 |
| OpenAlex | W3137224372 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 13 |
This article asks how the distinctive use of life-writing and focus on inter-ethnic intimacy in Han Suyin's popular middlebrow romance fictions A Many-Splendoured Thing (1952) and The Mountain is Young (1958) constitute a critique of decolonization and align with her radical politics as a spokesperson for Bandung-era non-alignment. The author suggests that in these two major fictions of the Cold War era Han reprises what Christina Klein identifies as a familiar "Cold War Orientalist" trope of inter-ethnic love but repurposes it so that the genre's characteristic objectifying treatment of (largely passive) Asian women desired by western men is reversed. In the process Han's tactical re-imagining of inter-ethnic romance provides a vehicle for political satire, feminist self-realization, and figuring of new postcolonial/decolonial identities and subject positions
Aesthetics · Art · Cold war · Decolonization · Ethnic group · Literature · Orientalism · Political science · Politics · Romance · Sociology · Trope (literature · Anthropology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Asian Studies and History · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies · Gender Studies · History · Law
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |