Speaker: Shuk Shun CHAN (MPhil student in Gender Studies and English Literary Studies, CUHK)

Chairperson: Prof. Michael O'SULLIVAN (Associate Professor, Department of English, CUHK)

Language: English

Registration: goo.gl/xeDVPi

Abstract: Building on Wenying Xu’s book Eating Identities: Reading Food in Asian American Literature (2008) as its fundamental framework, this thesis studies in two parts the contemporary works of three East-Asian diasporic authors, including Ang Lee, Helen Tse and Timothy Mo. The first part looks at three of Ang Lee’s movies, which are often known as the “Father Knows Best” trilogy. These cinematic narratives include Pushing Hands (1992), The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994). By analyzing his contribution to Asian American cinema, it explores how culinary tropes underscore the intersection of family, gender and sexuality. The second part, consisting of two chapters, extends the thesis’s geographical destination from America to Britain, and thus forms an Asia-to-Britain route by turning to the literary works of Helen Tse and Timothy Mo.

In doing so, I hope to contribute to the ongoing discussion on the relationships of food to gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and diaspora in East-Asian diasporic literature and film.  On the basis of Xu’s work, I first provide a comparative medium to look at the Asian American context from an East-Asian diasporic perspective. Moving beyond her limitations, I then also address Asian Anglophone literature—the subset focusing on the locations of China, Hong Kong, and Britain---as an understudied literary tradition.

In the first chapter to be presented at this talk, I argue that in order to subvert patriarchal ideas of power inscribed in gender relations, Lee purposefully emasculates the authoritative Chinese father via family foodways, who is ironically remasculinized (not with the help of the heir as his replica) but only at the mercy of the uncanny heiress.

Speaker's Biography: Nicholas CHAN Shuk Shun is currently reading for an MPhil in Gender Studies and English Literary Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include literature and film, diasporic studies, gender and sexuality, and medical humanities.