The Chinese Buddist monk Hoei-shin may have come to the west coast of Canada centuries before Columbus arrived in the Americas; and modern Chinese presence in Canada dates back more than a century, including the railway pioneers whose contribution was pivotal to the development of the nation from coast to coast.
This study of the literary output in English by Chinese Canadians begins with the 130-year history of the community in Canada to consider first how institutional racism and neglect contibuted to its collective silence in mainstream media, history, and mythology; and how historical awareness has emerged in the country. The genres of mythology anthology, fiction, poetry, drama and essay are considered in detail, as well as numerous writers, including Denise Chong, Sean Gunn, Winston Christopher Kam, Evelyn Lau, Sky Lee, Paul Lee, Fred Wah, Jim Wong-Chu and others.
"BEYOND SILENCE is the first book-length study to attempt to construct the historical and cultural contexts of Chinese-Canadian writing, search out its lost texts, and build a theoretical ground for its reading. Especially powerful are its arguments that silence and silencing have been the strategic and--for writing--paradoxical tropes of both Chinese and Chinese-Canadian culture"
- Frank Davey, University of Western Ontario
". . . an important milestone in the evolution of Canadian literary studies. By showing us how the historical experience of a community figures as recurrent themes and tropes in the texts produced by its writers and artists, this book powerfully deomonstrates the intertextuality of Chinese Canadian texts and why they can be grouped."
- Arun Mukherjee, York University