Vu, Chi Thi-My (2023) Spies and Aliens as Translated Figures: Strategies of Otherness in the Plays of Translingual Anglophone Writers of Asian Heritage. PhD thesis, Victoria University.

Abstract

Spies and Aliens as Translated Figures: Strategies of Otherness in the Plays of Translingual Anglophone Writers of Asian Heritage This doctoral thesis by creative product comprises my full-length play, Coloured Aliens and a critical exegesis that examines the plays of Asian translingual writers who use the genre tropes (the alien, the spy) as part of their literary strategy to manage their linguistically mobile identity. My study explores what it feels like to live in translation to investigate translingualism’s unique impact on the creative writing process. The creative component, Coloured Aliens, is a comedy that depicts an interracial couple navigating their romance in the context of racism. It investigates issues of racial and linguistic identity in the lives of Mai Nguyen, a Vietnamese-Australian playwright, and her Anglo-Celtic Australian boyfriend, Kevin O’Sullivan, who ultimately steals her persona to write a mainstream play that will save them from economic precarity. The critical exegesis examines the use of intertextuality, genre tropes and metatheatrical techniques in David Henry Hwang's play, M Butterfly, which is studied alongside my play. In chapter one, I draw on research by sociolinguists and Eva Hoffman’s memoir Lost in Translation to argue that translingualism is characterised by the experience of translation, which I define broadly to include both linguistic and cultural translation. Chapter two draws on research by Tina Chen to argue that my translingual reading of Hwang’s play reveals both strategies of imposture (within the narrative) and impersonation (in the operation of the play as a whole). I examine M Butterfly, its critical reception and interviews granted by the playwright to investigate how Hwang expresses his translingualism as an Asian writer working in the white and monolingual context of North American theatre in the late 1980s. Chapter three explores the use of the alien trope in my play to self-reflexively interrogate how it addresses the challenges of living in translation. Coloured Aliens references colonial Australia’s categorisation of Asians as ‘coloured aliens’, before conflating it with extraterrestrial aliens found in science fiction. I analyse how the stage production deploys reverseracial casting (where an Asian actor plays the white character and vice versa) and design elements to subvert expectations of racial/linguistic conformity.

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