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This interdisciplinary volume situates British Chinese cultures and identities at the centre of contemporary discourses that negotiate the complex entanglements between diasporic communities and belongings, migration and transculturality, representation and plurality. The six parts of this book focus on British Chinese agency, voices, and cultural production, shedding light on resistance to racist othering and the complexities of self-definition. At their core, the chapters discuss notions of transnationalism, immigration, and national identity, British Chinese Christianity, the trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic, (in)visibility and representation, mediations of cultural identity in community magazines as well as literary renditions of (post-)migrant British Chinese identities. Bringing together contributions from fields as diverse as history, sociology, theology, heritage studies, cultural and literary studies, this volume aims to diversify the understanding of what it means to be British Chinese and extends existing conversations in and beyond British Chinese studies into the 2020s.
List of contents
Chapter 1: British Chinese History Is British History : Situating Contemporary British Chinese Identities, Belongings, And Plurality.- Part One: Transnationalism, Immigration, And National Identity.- Chapter 2: British Chinese Culture And Identity: From The Postwar Years To The Early 2000s.- Chapter 3: Understanding British Chinese Identity Through Banal Practices In Everyday Life: Blended Language And Food Culture.- Part Two: British Chinese Christianity.- Chapter 4: British Immigration Policies And British Chinese Christianity.- Chapter 5: The Scattered Family Of The British Hong Kong Christian Diaspora: Post-Traumatic Journeys In The Early 2020s.- Part Three: Perspectives On The COVID-19 Pandemic And Beyond: Trauma And Community.- Chapter 6: The COVID We Remember.- Chapter 7: I Feel Like A Bird In A Cage: East Asian Parents Experience Of The COVID-19 Pandemic In The UK.- Part Four: In/Visibility And Representation .- Chapter 8: The Cultural Politics Of In/Visibility: Contesting British Chineseness In The Arts.- Chapter 9: Chinese Artists And The English Countryside: Chiang Yee, Li Yuan-Chia, And Jamie Lau.- Part Five: Voicing Identity In Community Magazines.- Chapter 10: Chinese Student Responses To Yellow Peril Fears And Sinophobia In Britain, 1910 1930.- Chapter 11: Negotiating Chineseness Through Ethnic Minority Media: Brushstrokes Magazine And The British Chinese Experience.- Part Six: Writing (Post)Migrant Identities And Belonging.- Chapter 12: Writing From The Western Chamber: First-Generation Immigrants And The Primordial Instinct In Xiaolu Guo s Novels.- Chapter 13: Matrilineage And Identity: Helen Tse s Sweet Mandarin (2007) And PP Wong s The Life Of A Banana (2014).
About the author
Judith Neder is Research Associate in British Cultural Studies at TU Dresden, Germany. Her doctoral thesis studies narratives of childhood and coming of age in contemporary British Chinese literature. She is the co-editor (with Eva-Maria Windberger) of the forthcoming volume Anglo-East Asian Exchanges in Literature, Culture, and Media (Palgrave Macmillan).
Eva-Maria Windberger is a Postdoctoral Researcher in English Studies at the University of Luxembourg, where she investigates (trans)cultural identity and belonging in British East and South East Asian theatre. She is the author of The Poetics of Empowerment in David Mitchell’s Novels (2023) and co-editor (with Judith Neder) of Anglo-East Asian Exchanges in Literature, Culture, and Media (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).
Summary
This interdisciplinary volume situates British Chinese cultures and identities at the centre of contemporary discourses that negotiate the complex entanglements between diasporic communities and belongings, migration and transculturality, representation and plurality. The six parts of this book focus on British Chinese agency, voices, and cultural production, shedding light on resistance to racist ‘othering’ and the complexities of self-definition. At their core, the chapters discuss notions of transnationalism, immigration, and national identity, British Chinese Christianity, the trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic, (in)visibility and representation, mediations of cultural identity in community magazines as well as literary renditions of (post-)migrant British Chinese identities. Bringing together contributions from fields as diverse as history, sociology, theology, heritage studies, cultural and literary studies, this volume aims to diversify the understanding of what it means to be ‘British Chinese’ and extends existing conversations in and beyond British Chinese studies into the 2020s.
