Reviews of:
Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora
“…groundbreaking work in Sinophone studies…essential reading for scholars and students of Chinese literature, comparative literature, world literature, cultural studies, and diaspora studies.” (more…)
–Karen Thornber, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
” This is a truly groundbreaking book. With admirable skill, Jing Tsu offers a riveting account of polylingualism that will set a new benchmark for erudition, analytical finesse, and historical vision in comparative literary studies. Her story of the Chinese language in modernity is as much about struggles over political and legal sovereignty as it is about literary governance, and as much about intralinguistic diversification as it is about interlinguistic competition. In a most important rhetorical move, Tsu demythifies the widespread presumptions about linguistic nativity as symptoms of an entrenched essentialism.”
–Rey Chow, Duke University
“This bold and intriguing study probes the consequences of the century-old struggle to make China’s ancient language modern and relocate a Sinophone world. The book takes us beyond the efforts by cultural and political reformers within China to harmonize its unique script to the multiplicity of sound. Tsu poses tantalizing questions for future Sinophone studies.”
–Wang Gungwu, National University of Singapore
“If you are interested in comparative literary studies, Chinese culture, and theories of interculturality–or if you are simply looking for an intellectually challenging, yet enjoyable reading experience–make sure to read this book…At the beginning of chapter 5, Jing Tsu quotes René Etiemble’s assertion in 1963 that Chinese become the international working language for comparative literary studies. Tsu’s book takes up this challenge with a twist, transforming it into a more crucial, critical move. As Tsu’s book suggests, it is not the language (or indeed languages) in which comparative literary studies are conducted as a discipline, but rather the field’s conceptual languages, perspectives, and examples that are in need of change. As Tsu provocatively states: “‘Native speaker’ is to language what color has been to race” (p. 197). Or, reframed slightly, the mother tongue, this embodiment of language in its “natural” state, as innate rather than acquired, remains an important mainstay of essentialism and identity politics, even in an age in which identity has been (theoretically) challenged–or “deconstructed”–in so many ways.” (more…)
–Andrea Bachner, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture
“…unusual, complex, and remarkable book.” (more…)
–Susan D. Blum, The China Journal
“The rapidly growing field of sinophone studies has gained prominence in recent years by challenging the standard historiography of what we call ‘modern Chinese literature’…only a few scholars have proposed specific methodologies to raise sinophone studies beyond the level of polemic…Jing Tsu’s groundbreaking Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora exemplifies this urgently needed scholarship. Tsu’s overarching goal is to make explicit the fraught relationship among language, nation, literature, and those language workers whose trade is literary criticism. She strips this uneasy nexus down to its basic but frequently taken-for-granted elements: the “sound” and “script” of the so-called Chinese language. The books’ eight substantive chapters present a persuasive narrative of the ways in which writers, critics, readers, and language-policy makers from the nineteenth century to the present have tried to negotiate and manipulate the multiple sounds and orthographies extant in the sinophone world.” (more…)
–Tzu-hui Celina Hung, The Journal of Asian Studies
“Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora is a fascinating inquiry into the institutionalization and dissemination of modern Chinese language from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Scholars and students in Chinese and comparative literary studies, language studies, cultural studies, and diasporic studies will find this manuscript immensely stimulating, as will general readers who are curious about the history of Chinese language in modern China. This is a brilliant work.”
–David Der-wei Wang, Harvard University
“This book is a must-read…one of [its] numerous merits lies in its identification and rigorous analysis of common patterns that underlie very disparate examples, ranging from 19th-century phonetization schemes to contemporary Chinese literature from Malaysia…Combined with a brilliant writing style, the study provides a multifaceted analysis that will be of special interest to scholars in comparative literature, translation studies, and sociolingustics.” (more…)
–Henning Klöter, China Information
“…this book is conceptually innovative and thoughtful. It is unique in its attempt to introduce issues of the written representation of Chinese languages to the fields of literature. In terms of its common ground with Sinophone studies, the book is unusual in that it links issues among China-centered writers and scholars to those who want to break from Sinocentric positions. Finally, in terms of scope, ranging from the late Qing dynasty to the present in North America, Taiwan, and Malaysia, it goes beyond almost any other single-authored book.”
–Edward M. Gunn, Jr., Cornell University
“Jing Tsu makes a provocative claim in the conclusion to hew newest book: ‘whatever appeal Sinophone studies now has, it will need to establish stronger dialogical roots in the longer history of diaspora and migration in all its disarticulated forms’ (p. 234). For educators who might feel overwhelmed by the vastness of Chinese literary history and the complexity of the language, Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora will prove an intriguing read. Tsu provides entrée into the complex study of Chinese in a time of global movements of people, language, cultural products, and knowledge form a theoretical understanding of how phonetics, orthography, literacy, and migration connect and fracture dependent on location. Her contributions to the concept and praxis of literary governance set the scene for future interrogations into the established and emerging literary (cyber)geographies of Chinese and its diasporic iterations of linguistic power, identity, and culture.” (more…)
Sally E. McWilliams, The Comparatist
“Echoing the classic Sound and Symbol in Chinese (1923) by the great Swedish Sinologist, Bernhard Karlgren, but going far beyond it in her inquisitiveness and in bringing the story of Sinitic languages and writing up to the present moment, Jing Tsu has produced a thoroughly stimulating and captivating work of linguistic and literary scholarship. Deftly navigating through such heretofore uncharted waters, Tsu guides us to a clear comprehension of extraordinarily complex issues of language, identity, and culture. Informed throughout by an acute understanding of the true nature of Sinitic languages as being governed by both phonetics and semantics and as being expressed both through speech and writing, Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora takes the exciting new field of Sinophone Studies to it highest level yet.”
–Victor Mair, University of Pennsylvania
“In her new monograph, Jing Tsu continues her exploration of the links between literature and national identity which she began in her first book Failure, Nationalism, and Literature. Raising questions about the organization of the global literary field, she proposes the new concept of literary governance to describe the established system of categorizing national literatures on the basis of seemingly obvious, but in fact barely definable, notions of native cultural and linguistic sensibility. Both in terms of its analytical framework and its subject matter, Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora constitutes a massive contribution to the study of Sinophone literature.”
–Michel Hockx, Director of SOAS China Institute, School of University of London
“Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora unveils a broad and many-splendored landscape of the modern Chinese language in theory and practice in all its dynamic manifestations. it both delineates and deconstructs the myth of a monolingual national language called Chinese. …There is no sounder and more all-rounded study of the cultural richness and diversity of Chinese diaspora, which has reached, as this book has shown, nearly global proportions.”
–Leo Ou-fan Lee, author of Shanghai Modern and City Between Worlds
“Jing Tsu’s dazzling purview of the place of Chinese as global language and literature is as timely as it is profound. The field is well served by a new-generation author who can so expertly balance not only the PRC-Taiwan binary but the broader voices of bilingual and diaspora writers.”
–Anthony Reid, Australian National University
“Jing Tsu opens up the field of modern Chinese literary studies by leaving its national moorings behind. She tells exquisite stories and offers illuminating analyses of the many ways the national language of China was open to global access in France, the U.S., Taiwan, and Malaysia. The diversity of sound and script she uncovers in the language leads to a much needed redrawing of the boundaries of modern Chinese literature and an important contribution to Sinophone studies.”
–Shu-mei Shih, author of Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific
“Tsu writes that ‘renewed by post-colonialist thinking, the idea of cosmopolitanism appears to be inflated with a facile optimism” (p. 114) and that the fashionable idea of “de-nationalism,” as in Pascale Casanova’s work, “turns a deaf ear to the fact that languages are still predominantly considered, written, and standardized along national lines” (p. 115). Even the most apparently cosmopolitan of writer must acknowledge the ways shifting identities and psychological play, game face, street credibility, and soul interference in the formation of identity…the author’s undeniable command of the material and the lucidity of her prose draw the reader into the swirling mass of historical detail.” (more…)
–Evelyn Nien-Ming Ch’ien, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews