Spatial Stories and Intersecting Geographies

Ebook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open intiative.

This book provides a fresh account of the literary and journalistic connection between Hong Kong, China, and Britain, and the different forms of literary production and cross-cultural encounters that emerged from within and across these three locales from 1890 to 1940. Through archival research of under-explored literary periodicals, newspapers, historical and biographical materials, as well as close reading of literary texts written by Hong Kong, British, and Chinese writers, it critically examines the various forms of transnational encounters, networks, and fissures in these places that were historically connected since the second half of the nineteenth century. It aims to decentre existing scholarship that tend to treat Britain and China as the major focuses of inquiry by re-directing attention to Hong Kong as a key locale when considering questions of representation, modernity, colonial and racial politics, transnational movements, and various literary and cultural responses to local and global issues. This book draws on literary and cultural theories, spatial theories, and critical perspectives in cultural geography and urban studies when examining a range of literary texts set in various imperial, colonial, and semi-colonial spaces. It treats the everyday, lived spaces as major sites of contested representations as well as key locales through which questions of identity, race, colonial politics, spatial boundaries and their limits, are explored, negotiated, and debated.