The Spatial Politics of Nation-Building: Minority Women Writers in Anglophone Malaysian and Singapore Literatures

Abstract

This article considers the spatial politics of nation-building in two novels by ethnic minority women writers from Malaysia and Singapore. Preeta Samarasan’s Evening Is the Whole Day depicts the claustrophobic Rajasekharan household, showing how the perversion of the patriarchal heteronormative family is linked to the restrictive ethno-nationalism of a new Malaysian nation and its betrayal of its ethnic minority subjects. In Balli Kaur Jaswal’s Inheritance, ethnic minority subjects have a place in the fast-developing new nation of Singapore because of its official multiracialism but only if they are quiescent, conform to sexual norms, and are not hampered by disability. Both writers question the historical building of national norms, arguing for a remapping of the nation’s spaces in the name of more equitable and inclusive futures.