Confessions of a liminal writer: An interview with Kee Thuan Chye
Confessions of a liminal writer: An inter view with Kee Th uan Chye
Mohammada Quayum 0
Recommended Citation
0 Quayum, Mohammada, Confessions of a liminal writer: An interview with Kee Thuan Chye , Kunapipi, 27(1), 2005. Available at:
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Article 15
Confessions of a liminal writer: An interview with Kee Th uan Chye
Abstract
Kee Thuan Chye was born in Penang, Malaysia in 1954. He started writing poetry and drama in the early
1970s, while he was still an undergraduate student of Literature at Universiti Sains Malaysia, and had
numerous radio plays broadcast on RTM (Radio Television Malaysia) during that period. He also wrote plays
for the stage, including The Situation of the Man who Stabbed a Dummy or a Woman and was Disarmed by
the Members of the Club for a Reason Yet Obscure, If There Was One (1974) and Eyeballs, Leper and a Very
Dead Spider (1975).
This journal article is available in Kunapipi: http://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol27/iss1/15
MOHAMMAD A. QUAYUM
Confessions of a Liminal Writer:
An Interview with Kee Thuan Chye
Kee Thuan Chye was born in Penang,
Malaysia in 1954. He started writing
poetry and drama in the early 1970s,
while he was still an undergraduate
student of Literature at Universiti Sains
Malaysia, and had numerous radio plays
broadcast on RTM (Radio Television
Malaysia) during that period. He also
wrote plays for the stage, including The
Situation of the Man who Stabbed a
Dummy or a Woman and was Disarmed
by the Members of the Club for a Reason
Yet Obscure, If There Was One (1974)
and Eyeballs, Leper and a Very Dead
Spider (1975).
However, Kee’s move to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital and premier city,
in 1979, where he now lives, marked the beginning of a new phase in his writing
that culminated in his agitprop play 1984 Here and Now, first performed in July
1985 at the Experimental Theatre in Kuala Lumpur. Since then, he has composed
The Big Purge, performed at the Essex University Theatre, England, in May
1988, We Could **** You, Mr Birch, first performed at the Experimental Theatre
in Kuala Lumpur in June 1994, and The Fall of Singapura, which has not been
staged yet. Moreover, Kee is the author of two volumes of prose: Old Doctors
Never Fade Away (1987) and Just In So Many Words (1993). His poems have
been published in numerous anthologies and journals at home and abroad.
As former Literary Editor of the Malaysian English daily, New Straits Times,
and current Associate Editor of the leading Malaysian newspaper The Star, Kee
is one of the most prominent English-language journalists in the country. He
was the recipient of a British Council Fellowship in 1987 and Australian Cultural
Award in 1994. In 1998, he was invited as a guest writer to the Melbourne
Writers Festival, the Brisbane Writers Festival, and Spring Writing in Sydney.
In 2001, he was invited to the inaugural Standard Chartered International Literary
Festival in Hong Kong. He has been a judge and regional chairperson of the
prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize.
Kee is also a deft actor and stage director. His acting credits over the last 25
years include roles in the films Entrapment and Anna and the King. He played a
major role in the long-running TV series City of the Rich, and the role of Willy
Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman on stage to unanimous acclaim
in 1989. He has also directed about a dozen plays for the theatre.
This interview was conducted via e-mail in November 2004.
* * *
MAQ: Tell us something about your ancestors who first came to Malaya. How
did they negotiate between the two cultures/worlds, following their migration?
KTC: I’m afraid I have no record of this.
MAQ: Has the cultural dislocation affected/enriched your imagination in any way?
KTC: Yes. It has certainly made me question my identity as a person and as a
writer. Malaysia is still a young polity, having become independent only
forty-seven years ago with a baggage of diverse races and cultures. The
Malaysian identity is still amorphous. People like me from immigrant
backgrounds although born here but not long after Independence have
had to struggle to find a sense of belonging, and through the decades, with
the formulation of ethnic-biased policies, the struggle has been made harder.
We’ve had to put up with being marginalised and being less privileged
than the Bumiputras. We’ve even had to suffer the insult of being called
‘pendatang’ (immigrant). I personally experienced the adverse effects of
such institutionalised racial discrimination when I was denied a tutorship
position after completing my first degree although I was top of my class.
That deprived me of the opportunity of pursuing my Masters because I
could not afford to continue my studies without a job.
Today, the racial divide is still there. At its recent general assembly,
UMNO, the dominant Malay-based ruling party, unveiled what it called
its ‘Malay Agenda’. It defies good moral sense that in this day and age, in
a multi-racial, plural society that is bein (...truncated)