Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature

7 October 2023 and Its Aftermath Through Edward Said’s Lens

Md. Mahmudul Hasan — 2025-06-01

The Palestinian tragedy meted out by Israeli settler colonial domination has lasted for many decades. Increasing Israeli atrocities against Palestinians range from targeted killings and settler violence to mass murders, destruction of builtscapes, and denial of basic necessities of life such as food, water, healthcare, and communication systems. After innumerable episodes of calculated unilateral escalation of military violence against Palestinians, Israel has exhibited an increase in its aggressive behaviour in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Had Edward Said been alive today, he would have taken great interest in interpreting the current events in the region. However, he identified a pattern in Israeli behaviour which has remained unjust to Palestinians since long before the 7 October 2023 event. Israel’s characteristic hostility to Palestinians examined by Said helps us understand its genocidal crimes, which this essay explores.

“Well Disposed Towards the Self and the World”: In Conversation with Daya Dissanayake

Amit Bhattacharya — 2025-06-01

This interview explores Daya Dissanayake’s moral vision, socio-cultural concerns, and creative credo. He discusses his latest novel The Sacred Grove (2024) and highlights his use of non-human and posthuman narrators. Dissanayake explains how bilingualism has enriched his work, as he extols digital creativity, a research mindset, a pluralistic outlook, and environmental awareness. The writer critiques the Eurocentric concept of nationalism and the lingering influence of imperialism on Sri Lankan identity, pleading for a more inclusive and eco-sensitive mindset. He also expresses his indebtedness to India’s cultural and literary heritage as a shaping influence on his sensibility. While he consciously avoids overt references to conflicts in his works, he offers a nuanced perspective on the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983 – 2009). He champions open-access publishing and lenient copyright laws and explores issues like family relationships, man-nature interactions, the gender question, the role of memory, and the need for non-violence. His scant poetic output and infrequent forays into non-fiction come under the scanner. As a votary of Subhashita Sahitya (morally responsible literature) Dissanayake regards universal well-being as his intended literary message. The interview ends with the author’s revelation of his future literary plans.

Faith and Other Poems

Jose V. Clutario — 2025-06-01

Oh My World

Ghulam Yasin — 2025-06-01

Celestial Salawat

Eka Yusup — 2025-06-01

Participatory Culture and the Death of Cyberflânerie in Tao Lin’s Taipei

Adil Hussain — 2025-06-01

This paper examines how Tao Lin’s novel Taipei is seen through the lens of the “cyberflânerie,” and how that approach does not critically engage with the text. Cyberflânerie evolved from the twentieth-century concept of flânerie developed by Walter Benjamin and is a modern reinterpretation of the traditional flâneur adapted to the digital age. With social media rendering cyberflânerie impossible, the protagonist in Taipei, Paul, navigates a world in which his identity, consciousness, and interactions are deeply mediated by the Internet and social media. The paper argues that Paul’s experiences reflect a broader cultural shift towards a participatory culture, where individuals simultaneously consume and produce digital content, blurring the lines between producer and consumer (prosumer). The novel is seen as a travelogue of the digital age and how the Internet structures identity, community, and even emotional experiences, often leading to a sense of disconnection and alienation. Engaging with theories from media ecology and participatory culture, the discussion shows how digital technologies shape cognitive and social behaviours, and how the Internet has replaced the passive flâneur with an active participant in a networked society.

Representation of Ancient Turks in Isajon Sulton’s Bilge Khagan

Ainur Akhmetova — 2025-06-01

Given its status as a Turkic-speaking nation of Central Asia, Uzbekistan provides a pertinent case study for the examination of contemporary portrayals of historical narratives, particularly those pertaining to the ancient Gokturks or Kök-Türks (ancient Turkic people), within the context of post-independence Uzbek literature. The present study examines the depiction of Turkic identity and ideas in Isajon Sulton’s novel Bilge Khagan from a postcolonial perspective, using pragmatic discourse analysis, new criticism, reader-response theory, and comparative literary methods. The findings demonstrate that Turkic elements, or Turkisms, integrated into the post-Soviet literary tradition of Turkic-speaking nations. These literary endeavours signify a deliberate attempt to decolonise cultural memory and revitalise Turkic heritage. The juxtaposition of Uzbek and Kazakh motifs is employed by authors to convey shared history, traditions, values, and the heroic legacy of the Gokturks, often with ideological objectives in mind. During the Soviet era, there was a considerable degree of distortion and suppression of Turkic literary and historical legacies. Orkhon-Yenisei inscriptions including Bilge Khagan, Kul Tigin, and Tonyukuk underpin modern Turkist literature. This article analyzes the reinterpretation of Bilge Khagan’s period in the second Ancient Turkic Khaganate, highlighting the author’s post-colonial interpretation of Turkism for contemporary readers.

Transcending Constraints: Female Bodily Discipline and Resistance in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian

Zhixing Nie — 2025-06-01

Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2015/2007) has been the subject of numerous scholarly explorations. Nevertheless, few studies have applied Michel Foucault’s theory of the body to examine the protagonist Yeong-hye’s struggle against societal norms. This paper fills this gap by analyzing how Yeong-hye’s body is disciplined, constrained, and reimagined within the frameworks of patriarchy and biopolitics. Through Foucault’s concept of the body as a site of power, we argue that Yeong-hye’s refusal to conform to societal expectations, such as her rejection of meat consumption and her attempts to “become a plant,” represents both a personal rebellion and a tragic reflection of the limitations imposed by patriarchal structures. This paper explores how her body, marked by both physical and psychological violence, becomes a battleground for identity reconstruction. This interpretation contributes to ongoing discussions on the intersection of gender, power, and the body, offering a fresh perspective on the existential and symbolic dimensions of Kang’s novel.

Roles, Conflicts, and Attachments: Motherhood in Selected Malaysian Poems

Lalitha Parasuraman — 2025-06-01

Motherhood is often perceived as a unique and transformative journey, intricately linked to mothers, children, families and society. The roles expected of mothers have not changed much despite the ever-evolving societal dynamics. Asian mothers, especially in modern Malaysia are expected to juggle work and household chores and attend to the needs of their loved ones including their children, spouses, and extended family members. More often than not, this results in tremendous amounts of struggles, stress, trauma, and long-term psychological impacts on mothers because failing to perform maternal duties is never an option. Correspondingly, this study explores Malaysian poetry that depicts the intricacies of motherhood and its various aspects. Role theory, which conceptualises daily activities as performing roles that are socially constructed classifications, is applied in the analysis of six Malaysian poems, written by both female and male poets of different age groups. The representations of role playing and role taking as employed within role theory is utilised to uncover the ways in which mothers develop their concept of self accordingly. Findings highlight how poetry can unravel the connecting flow of multiple roles in motherhood that leads to conflicts, yet still result in attachment between the mother and child. The analysis reveals that a mother’s role is actually paradoxical in nature and the multiple roles, conflicts, and attachments merge together within motherhood; these entities cannot function on their own as they are all interconnected in the relationship. Both positive and negative emotions have been found to play a crucial part in leading to various types of attachments between mothers and children, which can be loving, bittersweet, or traumatic. This research has found Malaysian poetry unravels the different representations of motherhood in Malaysia whose experience is more than what meets the eye.

Body as “Leased out” Land: Land-Women Embodiment in Devi’s and Huq’s Selected Stories

Maknun Akter — 2025-06-01

This article undertakes a postcolonial ecofeminist critique of Mahasweta Devi’s “Douloti the Bountiful” and Hasan Azizul Huq’s “The Daughter and the Oleander,” set against the backdrop of brutal tribal realities and post-partition migration in India, respectively. Postcolonial ecofeminism, positioned at the intersection of postcolonial and ecological discourse, highlights the shared subjugation of women and nature in the Global South. While rooted in Western ecofeminist concerns regarding the feminisation of nature and the naturalisation of women, it deconstructs the mind-body dualism and examines the women-nature connection through the material realities of ethnic, cultural, colonial, racial, and gendered hegemony. Postcolonial ecofeminism, particularly in postcolonial landscapes, critiques Western ecofeminists’ symbolic association between women and land, arguing that such connections must be reevaluated in the contexts where sexual violence and economic exploitation define women’s lived experiences. A critical reading of “Douloti the Bountiful” and “The Daughter and the Oleander” reveals that, within impoverished economies, women’s youthful and beautiful bodies are commodified as financial resources, often through forced prostitution. Drawing on Neelam Jabeen’s assertions, this study contends that in both narratives, the female body functions as an exploited site—analogous to fertile land that is continuously cultivated for crops and cash crops—underscoring the fact that in the Global South, the land-woman embodiment is not merely symbolic but a lived and material reality.

Strategies of Translating Culture-Specific Items (CSIs) in Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum

Yunchao Zuo — 2025-06-01

This study focused on the translation of culture-specific items (CSIs) in Mo Yan’s novel Red Sorghum and the applicability of Functionalist Theory in analysing the data. This aim was divided into three specific objectives: identifying the strategies of translating CSIs, exploring their occurrence rates, and examining whether or not functionalist theory is applicable to the analysis of data. Drawing upon Aixelá’s translation strategies and Nida’s classification, this study examined translation strategies within the framework of functionalist theory. The results showed that the most commonly used techniques are absolute universalisation and linguistic translation. Second, different translation procedures are required for different classifications of CSIs. Thirdly, the study found that in order to maintain artistic and aesthetic value, an aesthetic rule shall be considered in literary translation.

Rethinking Self-Discovery Through Ethical Choice in Han Suyin’s The Mountain is Young

Xiaoling Hu — 2025-06-01

Han Suyin’s The Mountain is Young (1958) portrays the love story of a married Eurasian woman in Kathmandu. While the remarkable love story unfolds alongside the protagonist’s struggle against the rigid European colonial morality, many studies primarily focus on the woman’s self-discovery and spiritual awakening through romantic love, failing to explore the ethical implications behind her choices that lead to self-discovery. Nie Zhenzhao’s ethical literary criticism highlights that the ethical dilemmas and choices of characters influence their actions and the progression of plot within the literary works. Drawing on Nie’s framework, along with postcolonial concepts of neocolonialism and Otherness, this study examines the ethical dilemmas and choices faced by a married Eurasian woman in Nepal’s post-colonial period, focusing on how these moral struggles shape her self-discovery. Examining her ethical choices, this study argues that the Eurasian woman’s search for self is essentially an ethical issue, resulting from the moral dilemmas imposed by European colonial standards. An ethical literary analysis of the Eurasian woman’s self-discovery not only offers a new perspective on the novel but also reveals the ethical choice of a female Eurasian writer to resist the old colonial ethical order in the post-colonial period.

Ableism’s Impact on Body and Identity in Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People

Mary Job T — 2025-06-01

This study explores the link between ableism and identity formation through the discourse analysis of Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People (2007). Set against the backdrop of a post-industrial disaster, the Bhopal gas tragedy in an Indian metropolis, the novel provides a powerful narrative about the marginalised. By analysing the social perceptions and structures that define ability, normalcy, and physical beauty, the study investigates how societal norms and cultural attitudes frame the protagonist’s experiences of exclusion and identity crisis. The study further investigates how the novel critiques the broader social and cultural dimensions of ableism in post-colonial contexts, revealing the intersection of power, disability, and identity in the social fabric of Asian societies. Social constructionist perspectives provide a framework for comprehending the social construction of disability, stigma, othering of disabled bodies, and cultural norms of beauty, normalcy, ability, and identity. Subjective and objective realities are discussed around the character, Animal. The study findings reveal the profound personal consequence of ableism on the self-image, body image, and self-perception of individuals with disabilities, the dehumanisation, marginalisation, and ultimately, an identity crisis of disabled individuals.

Roshenara Khan. Women in Bengali Muslim Society

Atasi Roy — 2025-06-01

Rahat Ara Begum. Lost Tales from a Bygone Era

Sabiha Huq — 2025-06-01

Sengupta Nabanita and Samrita Sengupta Sinha, eds. Female Narratives of Protest: Literary and Cultural Representations from South Asia

Aparna Singh — 2025-06-01

Mitali Chakravarty and Ratnottama Sengupta, eds. Our Stories, Our Struggle Violence and the Lives of Women

Sutanuka Ghosh Roy — 2025-06-01

Himadri Lahiri and Srideep Mukherjee (eds), Nationhood and the Indian Subcontinent: Contemporary Cultural Reflections

Dhurjjati Sarma — 2025-06-01