Malayan Chinese women in a time of war: Gender, narration, and subversion in Han Suyin’s And the Rain My Drink

ABSTRACT

Set in the Malayan Emergency (1948-60), Han Suyin’s And the Rain My Drink (1956) is important for its portrayal of working-class, rural Malayan Chinese women, one of the most oppressed subaltern groups at the time. Tapping into the gendered structures of imperial history that have silenced the voices of women, especially if they belonged to marginalized ethnic groups and/or the lower social class, the novel’s exploration of women’s wartime experiences through nature and the jungle landscape brings to the fore key issues of colonialism, race, class, and knowledge. Although mistreated, mistranslated, and misunderstood by the British imperialists, colonized Malayan Chinese women nonetheless possess a subversive or revolutionary potential that can threaten the essentializing gaze of the patriarchal empire. More importantly, the gendered narrative of Malayan Chinese women in a time of war sheds light on British colonialism’s fantasies and failures.

KEYWORDS:

• Han Suyin
• Malayan Emergency
• British Empire
• gender
• race
• class

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia, for the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS/1/2019/SSI02/USM/02/1), which helped fund this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In 1963, Malaya (known today as Peninsular or West Malaysia) joined forces with Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore to form Malaysia. In 1965, Singapore separated from Malaysia and became an independent nation.

2. Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim (1900) and Heart of Darkness (1902) are excellent examples of this orientalist trope. See also Yao (2016, 84) on the historical roots of this divisive strategy.

3. The original 1956 title contains an ellipsis (… and the Rain my Drink), which has been removed in subsequent reprints.

4. For studies on women in the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), see Khoo (2004), Tan (2008), and Musa (2013).

5. Han married Leon Comber, an officer of the Malayan Special Branch during the Emergency, and moved to Johor Bahru, where she was known as Dr Elisabeth Comber. And the Rain My Drink contains many observations based on her experiences in Johor Bahru, also one of the major hotspots for communist activities at the time. Insights into her time in Malaya can be found in Han’s autobiography, My House has Two Doors (Han 1980, 64, 76).

6. For other literary studies of And the Rain My Drink, see Lyon (1978) and Lee (2014).

7. There were also intra-racial divisions among the Chinese community for various reasons, including ideological affiliations (pro-Kuomintang), the desire to protect businesses, or simply to affirm their communal identity. The Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) was in fact formed to address the different (non-communist) aspirations of the Chinese community. For details, see Hack (1999).

8. Considered a key counter-insurgency strategy, New Villages were basically fenced spaces for the resettlement of targeted population, many of whom were rural Chinese villagers. According to Tan (2009, 216), 573,000 rural inhabitants were resettled into 480 New Villages during the Emergency. They were forcefully relocated and subjected to tight surveillance.

9. See Hack (1999) for more about the “population control” policy.

10. See Musa (2013) on women’s reasons for joining the MCP as well as details of their careers and lives.

11. For more about the use of propaganda to win the Malayans’ “hearts and minds”, see Ramakrishna (2002).

12. Han’s florid descriptions of the Malayan jungle (Han [1956] 2010, 13, 94, 134, 143) bring to mind Conrad’s impenetrable jungle in Heart of Darkness. There are indeed interesting parallels between the two novels as they explore colonial racism set against the backdrop of the dark jungle, whose denizens are also the “enemy” of European civilization. For an excellent analysis of the landscape in Heart of Darkness, see McClintock (1984).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Grace V.S. Chin

Grace V.S. Chin is senior lecturer in English Language Studies at Universiti Sains Malaysia. She specializes in postcolonial Southeast Asian literatures in English, with a focus on the intersections of race, gender, and/or class in contemporary societies and diasporas. Her works have been featured in refereed journals that include The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, World Englishes, and the Journal of Transnational American Studies. She is also the co-editor of The Southeast Asian Woman Writes Back: Gender, Identity and Nation in the Literatures of Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines (2018) and Appropriating Kartini: Colonial, National and Transnational Memories of an Indonesian Icon (2020). She is the editor of a forthcoming volume, Translational Politics in Southeast Asian Literatures: Contesting Race, Gender, and Sexuality (2021).