Narrating Feminism in Southeast Asia: Migrational Labor Women’s Lives and Feminine Desires Through the Class Perspective (A Study of Y Ban and Wena Poon’s Narratives)
摘要
The tropes of Western feminist thought have become widespread across many Southeast Asian societies. Localized and situated responses seek to moderate and resist Western-centric feminist ideologies that focus on sexuality and the individual. Additionally, feminism has become increasingly complex, as its issues are not only related to sex/gender but also to race and class with factors associated with economic, political, and cultural conditions, which greatly influence feminism and feminist practices. Such a feminist approach is becoming more widespread and is demonstrated in specific contexts. This essay focuses on analyzing the short fiction of Y Ban’s “I am đàn bà” [I am a Woman] and Wena Poon’s “Development,” from Vietnam and Singapore, respectively. These stories reimagine Southeast Asian feminist responses from the perspectives of immigrant female workers and highlight the derivative nature and transformation of feminism as well as its potential in relation to factors beyond sex/gender, such as class. From this analysis, the varying emphases of feminism in Southeast Asian reimagining emerge and are illustrated in different situations. To achieve this, the essay focuses on discussing three prominent comparative features of transnational female labor’s situational feminism in these two narratives: (1) Women in the migrant working class and issues of sexuality and the abused body; (2) Domestic labor environment and the doubly invisible exploitation of migrant female workers and the unintentional reinforcement of patriarchal dominance; and (3) The phenomenon of voicelessness and weak resistance among migrant women workers in the lower social class.