A Closer Look at the Status of Malaysian Literature Written in English- an Islamic Perspective
The question of how best to achieve balance and to appease all the races in a country like post-Independence Malaysia is still an issue that can spark debate. Without getting into this debate too much, this entry attempts to give the readers of this blog a brief and concise take on the issue of the exclusivity which our national language policies give to the Malay Language. Just to be clear, the writers on this site do not dispute the status given to the Malay language as the official national language of Malaysia. What we attempt to afford our readers is what(in our view) is a more Islamic standpoint on the question of whether Malaysian literature in other languages besides Malay (with attention given to Malaysian literature written in English) should be recognized as part of the corpus we call Malaysian literature.
Wong Phui Nam feels a further sense of displacement from inherent aspects of the very language with which he writes- mostly stemming from the fact that he is a Peranakan who is educated in English. He was once quoted to say this about writing in English in as a Peranakan living in Malaysia, “Even for a writer in Malay, whether he is a Malay or a non-Malay, he has to reinvent the language. All the more so for Indians and Chinese. For a Chinese, when we write in Chinese, we cannot pretend that nothing has happened and try to write Tang poetry. So for us to write in English, we are exiled three times, culturally and spiritually from China, culturally from the indigenous Malay culture and then writing in English. We cannot claim that it is a tradition. I would say we have appropriated the language. So, in a way, it is a much more interesting medium to work with, to work with the language against the tradition.”
What we hope to illustrate to the readers of this blog by the above explanation on the sense of displacement detected in Phui Nam’s poetry is this; that being a writer who writes in English in Malaysia can be a very disheartening thing. Phui Nam is not alone in this. This sense of displacement, and the feeling that their writing is marginalized by the Malaysian language policies is a sentiment that has been expressed by several other writers of Malaysian literature in English; K. S. Maniam, Ee Tiang Hong and Shirley Lim, to name a few- Ee and Lim in fact left the country, citing the many constraints involved with writing as a cause for their decision to leave the country.
Only literature written in Malay is recognized as Malaysian literature. While on the surface, it may seem petty for one to bicker about the simple of recognition, it is important for us to understand that recognition is only the starting point of the debate. The need for the national language policy to recognize Malaysian literature in English stems from the fact that recognition brings about greater access of the literature to the people, and also brings about the possibility for Malaysian literary works in other languages to be recognized for their level of excellence. In the status quo, only literary works in the Malay language are up for literary awards which are sanctioned by the government.
The Islamic perspective we can provide with regards to this is simply this; while Malaysia may not be ready to put the other main spoken languages in Malaysia on par with Malay, it is high time that we recognize the literatures written in these languages as Malaysian. We on this blog do not feel that these two terms are necessarily mutually exclusive- the Malay language can still be recognized as the official national language while literature written in English, Tamil and Cantonese are recognized as Malaysian literature.
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About Me
- imansakinahnabila
- We are the proud fans of the works of the great Malaysian poet, Wong Pui Nam.
About Me
My name is Nabilah Lokmal.
:: aLL aBoUT Me ::
Muizatul iman...a name given by my mother.I was born on 24th November 1987 and grown up in Johor.I am a student in a well-known university called IIUM.I'm majoring in Arabic language and minoring in English language.Insyaallah this semester is my final semester in IIUM.
Me, Myself and I
My name is Nur Sakinah, i am taking BENL and majoring in Combination.i am keen to learn new things from this course as i am an enthusiast in every positive thing in this world. As simple as that.
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