qUCL 'The Memory Police and the Queer Feminist Writer: Theory, Pedagogy, and Becoming in Hong Kong'

What might a work of Japanese literature say about Hong Kong? Ogawa Yōko’s The Memory Police is a novel about the disappearance of words, memories, and people on an unnamed island, portraying the disintegration of voices and bodies. While comparisons have been drawn between the novel and Hong Kong today, a queer feminist perspective sheds light upon the relationship between women’s voices and bodies, acts of reading and writing, and what it means to live through the end of the world.

In her talk, Grace En-Yi Ting builds upon a broader understanding of Ogawa’s oeuvre while taking up the novel to reflect upon her own lived experiences of gender, race, and queerness, particularly found in recent engagement with pedagogy in Hong Kong classrooms. If Ogawa’s novel suggests the power of words, what does it mean specifically to “translate” queer women of color feminisms across linguistic and cultural boundaries in difficult times? What are the words that help us carry on, and in what languages do we find them? Moving between English, Japanese, Mandarin, and Cantonese, this talk situates Japanese literature within multilingual spaces of injury and loss, translation and citation in Sinophone and Asian American contexts.

With respondents comparative literary scholar Dr. Nozomi Uematsu (University of Sheffield), Hong Kong writer Yin Lo and Student Union LGBQ+ Officer Angel Ma.

All welcome, free to attend this hybrid event; in person at IAS Forum, G17, South Wing, or via Zoom). Please select the appropriate ticket when registering at https://qucl-memory-police.eventbrite.co.uk and adhere to qUCL's Code of Conduct