Nobody's English; or the Atypicality of East Asian Anglophone Literature

Abstract

Abstract:This essay revisits a long-standing question that has been renewed with some political urgency in the rise of the new disciplinary nomenclature of global Anglophone studies: what does it mean to make knowledge out of other people's languages? I explore this question through the works of two Chinese American writers, R. F. Kuang and Yiyun Li, who both write in English about the use of other people's language(s), and the etymology of other people's words. I read these two writers of East Asian descent as atypical objects of study for the burgeoning field of global Anglophone Studies, which has so far centered predominantly on postcolonial writers.