Essentialism And The Diasporic Native Informant: Malaysia In Hsu Ming Teos Love And Vertigo

Hsu Ming Teo’s (2000) novel Love and Vertigo oscillates between three countries,Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. Though Teo is seen to be affiliated with Malaysia,and certainly appraised as articulating her ethnic history with clarity of creative andartistic skill, the image of Malaysia that she shapes come to the fore as a rememberedreality, through the glimpses caught from the morsels of both memory and filial visits tothis estranged home/ancestral land. The most significant issue that resides at the heart ofsuch writings is the repudiation of the Chinese community by the Malays in Malaysia.The images of Malaysia in the novel are fleeting, yet when they do appear they seem tobe the most macabre amongst the spectres of the past that haunt the main protagonist,Grace. This article discusses the almost ghostly role that Malaysia plays in the novel andargues that the cultural memory of the older country lies entombed with the ghost of the1969 racial riots. It concludes that when writings by diasporic native informants such asTeo and others around the globe are taken to be authentic renditions of ethnic heritage aspart of multicultural politics in the cosmopolitan, the implications of these are highlyserious as they are largely constructions of decidedly essentialist discourses of the oldercountry.