Fabulation as Healing: Reading Dung Kai-cheung’s Hong Kong Type Diasporically
This article aims to offer a diasporic reading of Dung Kai-cheung’s 2021 novel, Hong Kong Type 香港字 (Hoeng1 Gong2 Zi6). Although set in post-2019 Hong Kong, the novel offers constructive ways for Hongkongers living abroad to think about the relationship between their diasporic locality and Hong Kong...
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| Argitaratua izan da: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/transtexts, |
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| Formatua: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
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Transtext(e)s Transcultures
2024
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| Sarrera elektronikoa: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Gaia: | This article aims to offer a diasporic reading of Dung Kai-cheung’s 2021 novel, Hong Kong Type 香港字 (Hoeng1 Gong2 Zi6). Although set in post-2019 Hong Kong, the novel offers constructive ways for Hongkongers living abroad to think about the relationship between their diasporic locality and Hong Kong culture. The novel features a female protagonist recovering from her mental health issues (triggered, as insinuated in the novel, by the protests) through helping out at an exhibition on Hong Kong’s first lead movable types for printing in Chinese, manufactured by the London Missionary Society in the 1800s. In the process, the protagonist finds out more about her own family history, as well as hallucinates a dialogue with those lead types who teach her Hong Kong’s publishing history. Thus, weaving together Hong Kong cultural history with personal family history, the protagonist’s ‘hallucinations’ become part of her journey of healing. Furthermore, such hallucinations, I argue, can be read allegorically for any Hongkonger affected by the protests, whether for those who remain and those who have left. With reference to Deleuze and Guattari’s formulation of ‘fabulation’ or ‘myth-making’, which sheds light on how myths are collectively produced for communities, I will highlight how literature (that is, storytelling understood as fabulation) reminds Hongkongers that wherever they are, an engagement with Hong Kong culture and history is a vital coping mechanism in the post-protest era. |
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