Translating divided language worlds and intra-Chinese differences in Anglophone Singapore literature: Reading Suchen Christine Lim’s The River’s Song and Jeremy Tiang’s State of Emergency

Abstract

This article explores how contemporary Anglophone Singapore writers translate the historically divided language worlds of the majority Chinese population in the second half of the twentieth century when the processes of decolonization and nationalism were deeply intertwined with communism and Cold War politics. I discuss the dichotomy in the Singapore Chinese community between the so-called English-educated and Chinese-educated by examining the history of education during the colonial period and the cultural and political differences between the groups. I then explore how two novels — Suchen Christine Lim’s The River’s Song (2014) and Jeremy Tiang’s State of Emergency (2017) — seek to achieve intercultural equivalence between the two language worlds in their choice of narrative strategies and attempt a symbolic resolution of these historical linguistic and cultural differences that have been fundamental to Singapore’s understanding of its national narrative.