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ABSTRACT
This article investigates the representation of nature in contemporary Malaysian life-writings in English by female writers of Malay, Chinese and Indian ethnic origins. Adibah Amin’s This End of the Rainbow, Christine Ramsay’s Days Gone By and Muthammal Palanisamy’s From Shore to Shore are analysed by contextualizing the use of nature as an element in narrative strategy that indicates a sense of textual commonality. Through an examination of the agency and subjectivity of each protagonist, this article argues that nature is used to forward a homogenizing identity in the Malay nationalist life-writing, and to trace and validate diasporic roots in the Chinese and Indian texts. Despite the nationalist and diasporic attributes of the three texts, which are grounded on the writers’ ethnic differences, the use of nature indicates a common concern and promising future for the development of Malaysian Literature in English.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Ramsay’s life-writing was originally published in 2003; this article examines the revised version published in Malaysia in 2007. Palanisamy’s work also involves two versions; the original Malaysian version published in 2002 is used in this article, not the Tamil edition published in South India in 2007.
2. Although Yap’s (Citation1971) study includes works from Malaysia and Singapore from the colonial era to the late 1960s, for the purpose of this article only those concerning Malaysia have been considered.
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Notes on contributors
Kavitha Ganesan
Kavitha Ganesan is a Senior Lecturer at University Malaysia Sabah. She teaches courses on Malaysian Literature in English and Gender Studies. Her current research focuses on the Oral Literature of the minority indigenous groups in Sabah.