Transnational Island in an Asian Sea
–
Afterness
and the City of Hong Kong
In 2010, writer Xu Xi led a group of authors,
teachers and students from all over the world to
establish
a
Master of Fine Arts program in writing at the City University of Hong Kong.
One of the
very
few MFA programs in Asia
at that time, the
MFA’s final act
was to publish
Afterness:
Literature
From the New Transnational Asia
–
a collection of
poetry, fiction, and nonfiction
published in 2016.
The collection
spans
the six years of the program as well as 35 cities across the globe: Hong Kong to
Manila to Perth to San Francisco to New York to Stockholm, not to mention
countless
unnamed
places in between.
I will examine this collection in its capacity to present and negotiate various forms
of transnationalism as well as its incorporation of the distinct
presence of Hong Kong,
an
island often
caught between cultures and governments as much as
historical eras. Surrounded by salt water, the
city of Hong Kong appears almost tantamount to
cultural contact, world trade and global relations
but also a variety of conflicts that arise from such a position as transnational contact zone.
