Embracing the Xenophone

Abstract

By interrogating the borderlands of the discipline of Chinese literature, this article argues that Chinese literary studies should recognize non-Sinitic-language literatures that engage with issues of Chineseness as proper objects of study. Prevailing frameworks in Chinese and Sinophone literary studies range from an implicit aversion to non-Sinitic-language texts to their explicit exclusion. The consequence, however, is that texts that would otherwise be considered works of Chinese literature based on their content and/or combinations of other factors are condemned to a “literary no-man's land.” By removing the minimum threshold of language for consideration in the Chinese literary tradition and permitting texts that otherwise reflect or participate in the production of discourses of Chineseness—which the author theorizes as an embrace of the xenophone—the study of Chinese literature recuperates previously excluded expressions of Chineseness and begins writing a new branch of Chinese literary history. As case in point, the author analyzes the Spanish-language Chinese literature of Chinese Peruvian American writer Siu Kam Wen, specifically, his first collection of short stories, El tramo final (The Final Stretch). From offering new ideas of what it means to be Chinese to rewriting the history of China's red legacies, Siu's work represents a needed intervention in Chinese literary studies that would otherwise be excluded owing to its language of composition.