Lorraine Lau
Hong Kong Studies. 2024, 4(1): 37-56.
A Hong Kong-born biracial poet based in the United Kingdom since childhood, Sarah Howe explores in her debut collection, Loop of Jade (2015), the complexities of Hong Kong through the lens of diaspora. This article examines Howe's representations of language and silence in relation to writing Hong Kong as a third space between dominant cultural forces. I will explore self-writing as a mode of cultural production that, through the process of hybridization, frequently challenges the boundaries of hierarchical binaries. Writing in English, Howe employs her limited knowledge of the Chinese language to weave a diasporic family narrative that is defined through its fragmentation and ambiguity. Framing her mother's childhood stories as a vehicle for understanding her family history in Hong Kong, Howe establishes a connection between her mother's reticent storytelling and her loss of access to her “mother tongue,” her mother's native language. Adjacent to her exploration of language, her visualization of silences through poetic form underscores the marginality of self-writing in diaspora while also questioning the assumed truthfulness of family history and, by extension, the history of “home.” With a focus on the dynamics between motherhood and mother tongue, as well as language and silence, in Loop of Jade's family narratives, I will argue for a reading of Howe's poetry as the formation of a Hong Kong diasporic identity that draws on hybridity and marginality. Howe's experimentation with language, genre, and poetic form articulates a Hong Kong identity that is not “pure” but rather rooted in the incommensurability of differences.
