Anglicizing Chineseness and resisting self-Orientalism: A contrapuntal reading of Chinese writing in English

Abstract

This article examines the understudied phenomenon of Chinese writers’ engagement with the Anglophone literary world against the backdrop of globalization. Drawing on Edward Said’s contrapuntal theory of reading, this article looks at how Chinese writers Lijia Zhang and Annie Wang thematically challenge self-Orientalism in their representations of China, while simultaneously preserving a realistic ambience of contemporary Chinese society through what Rey Chow defines as a “xenophonic” style of English (2014: 59), achieved by embedding Chinese expressions in their novels. The analysis demonstrates how Chinese writing in English engages with postcolonial and global Anglophone discourses, and offers a model to understand the resonance between both disciplines from the “expanding circle” of literatures written in English in nations where English is a foreign language (Kachru, 1998: 93).