image of person or book cover 9151392280930413747.jpg
This image has been sourced from online.
y separately published work icon Playing Madame Mao single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2000... 2000 Playing Madame Mao
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Contemporary Singapore: Actress Chiang Ching performs Madame Mao Tse-Tung on stage while her husband, Tang, is arrested and detained without trial. Struggling to understand her own role and her country's cultural and political history Chiang Ching, like her alter-ego, becomes increasingly delusional, and the lines of her world - the real, mythical and imagined - become blurred. Lau Siew Mel creates a challenging and potent weave of Chinese diaspora, political intrigue and personal journeys in a battle for meaning.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Notes

  • Dedication: For Esmi and Matthew with my love.
  • Epigraph: I realized how in her own mind truth and fiction, history and literature, past and present had blurred. Such synthesis was at the heart of propaganda by which she lived. American journalist Roxane Witke on Madam Mao Tse-tung.
  • Epigraph: There is no construction without destruction, no flowing without damming and no motion without rest; the two are locked in a life-and-death struggle. Chairman Mao.
  • Epigraph: Comrades, you should always bear your own responsibilities. If you've got to shit, shit! If you've got to fart, fart! Don't hold things down in your bowels, and you'll feel easier. Chairman Mao.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Alternative title: Ypodyomeni tin kyria Mao
Language: Greek
VIEW PUBLICATION DETAILS FOR ALL VERSIONS ()

Related Works

Playing Madame Mao Lau Siew Mei , 1997 single work short story
— Appears in: Australian Short Stories , no. 57 1997; (p. 7-19) New Letters , vol. 63 no. 3 1997; (p. 15-30)
Playing Madame Mao Lau Siew Mei , 2000 extract novel (Playing Madame Mao)
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , no. 65 2000; (p. 85-87)
VIEW ALL RELATED WORKS (2)

Works about this Work

y separately published work icon Representations of Memory and Identity in Chinese Australian English Novels Supervisor Beibei Chen , Canberra : 2015 18594841 2015 single work thesis

'This thesis argues that one of the main characteristics of contemporary Chinese Australian literature in English language is its heavy focus on memory and identity. In order to prove this claim, the thesis analyses five English-language novels written by Chinese Australian writers from the period 1990-2010.'

Source: Thesis abstract.
Southeast Asian Australian Women’s Fiction and the Globalization of “Magic” Paul Giffard-Foret , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Postcolonial Writing , vol. 50 no. 6 2014; (p. 675-687) 'This article discusses the evolution of magical realism in relation to the postcolonial by looking at three contemporary Australian women authors originating from Southeast Asia. Besides extending magical realism to the Australian and Southeast Asian regions, these authors show the contours of the literary mode to be flexible, as magical realism has moved from being a localized Latin American trend to assuming a significant status on the international market. Concomitantly, their fiction develops various forms of a postcolonial aesthetics of “home” – forms that are neither pure nor authentic, but always-already partial and complicit with orientalist practices, in particular in light of new fault lines opened up in the wake of decolonization. This is one reason why their fiction embraces magical realist modes of representation: as an ambivalent literary mode, straddling the “actual” and the “imaginary”, and situated in-between resistance to, and collaboration with, Eurocentric modes of representation, magical realism retains a strong political relevance in a globalized, postcolonial era.' (Publication abstract)
Writing Chinese Diaspora : After the 'White Australia Policy' Deborah L. Madsen , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Reading Down Under : Australian Literary Studies Reader 2009; (p. 263-270) Australian Made : A Multicultural Reader 2010; (p. 158-172) An overview of Chinese-Australian writing.
Seeing Double : The Quest for Chineseness in Australia Wenche Ommundsen , 2008 single work criticism
— Appears in: Cultural Studies and Literary Theory , no. 16 2008; (p. 90-109) 'Chinese and other Asians, this essay argues, performed a structural function in the developing national consciousness of Australia as the racial/cultural Other against which the national self was defined and towards which its fears and desires could be projected. Today, Chinese Australian writers use the image of the double to explore their own position in the national psyche. To what extent, they ask, is it possible to imagine a merging of Asian and Australian, observer and observed, representation and self-construction? Is the Chinese-antipodean identity always a site of conflict and contradiction or can it be lived as a happier kind of hybridity?' -- Author's abstract
Tales of Two Cities: Fictions by Lau Siew Mei and Susan Johnson Lyn Jacobs , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 18 no. 2 2004; (p. 113-118)
The Vital Shore Judith White , 2000 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 22 August vol. 118 no. 6238 2000; (p. 94-95)
— Review of Vixen Hoa Pham , 2000 single work novel ; The Arch-Traitor's Lament Garry Satherley , 2000 single work novel ; The Storyteller Adib Khan , 2000 single work novel ; The Australian Fiance Simone Lazaroo , 2000 single work novel ; Family Album : A Novel of Secrets and Memories Margaret Scott , 2000 single work novel ; Playing Madame Mao Lau Siew Mei , 2000 single work novel ; Conditions of Faith Alex Miller , 2000 single work novel ; The Company : The Story of a Murderer Arabella Edge , 2000 single work novel
Eastern and Western Mythologies Katharine England , 2000 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June no. 221 2000; (p. 41)
— Review of Playing Madame Mao Lau Siew Mei , 2000 single work novel
From Pedestrian to Magic Realism and Escapism Thuy On , 2000 single work review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 2 July 2000; (p. 11)
— Review of Playing Madame Mao Lau Siew Mei , 2000 single work novel
Untitled Penelope Davie , 2000 single work review
— Appears in: Imago : New Writing , vol. 12 no. 3 2000; (p. 139-140)
— Review of Playing Madame Mao Lau Siew Mei , 2000 single work novel
A Butterfly Nailed to the Page Alice Healy , 2001 single work review
— Appears in: Overland , Winter no. 163 2001; (p. 111-113)
— Review of The Office as a Boat : A Chronicle Moya Costello , 2000 single work novel ; Shore and Shelter Keith McLeod , 2000 single work novel ; Things You Get for Free Michael McGirr , 2000 single work autobiography ; Playing Madame Mao Lau Siew Mei , 2000 single work novel
Tales of Two Cities: Fictions by Lau Siew Mei and Susan Johnson Lyn Jacobs , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 18 no. 2 2004; (p. 113-118)
Writing Chinese Diaspora : After the 'White Australia Policy' Deborah L. Madsen , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Reading Down Under : Australian Literary Studies Reader 2009; (p. 263-270) Australian Made : A Multicultural Reader 2010; (p. 158-172) An overview of Chinese-Australian writing.
Seeing Double : The Quest for Chineseness in Australia Wenche Ommundsen , 2008 single work criticism
— Appears in: Cultural Studies and Literary Theory , no. 16 2008; (p. 90-109) 'Chinese and other Asians, this essay argues, performed a structural function in the developing national consciousness of Australia as the racial/cultural Other against which the national self was defined and towards which its fears and desires could be projected. Today, Chinese Australian writers use the image of the double to explore their own position in the national psyche. To what extent, they ask, is it possible to imagine a merging of Asian and Australian, observer and observed, representation and self-construction? Is the Chinese-antipodean identity always a site of conflict and contradiction or can it be lived as a happier kind of hybridity?' -- Author's abstract
Quiet Achiever Karen Milliner , 2000 single work biography
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 17 June 2000; (p. 9)
Southeast Asian Australian Women’s Fiction and the Globalization of “Magic” Paul Giffard-Foret , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Postcolonial Writing , vol. 50 no. 6 2014; (p. 675-687) 'This article discusses the evolution of magical realism in relation to the postcolonial by looking at three contemporary Australian women authors originating from Southeast Asia. Besides extending magical realism to the Australian and Southeast Asian regions, these authors show the contours of the literary mode to be flexible, as magical realism has moved from being a localized Latin American trend to assuming a significant status on the international market. Concomitantly, their fiction develops various forms of a postcolonial aesthetics of “home” – forms that are neither pure nor authentic, but always-already partial and complicit with orientalist practices, in particular in light of new fault lines opened up in the wake of decolonization. This is one reason why their fiction embraces magical realist modes of representation: as an ambivalent literary mode, straddling the “actual” and the “imaginary”, and situated in-between resistance to, and collaboration with, Eurocentric modes of representation, magical realism retains a strong political relevance in a globalized, postcolonial era.' (Publication abstract)
VIEW ALL WORKS ABOUT (14)

Awards

VIEW ALL AWARDS (2)
Last amended 17 Aug 2016 09:18:32
Subjects:
  • c
    Singapore,
    c
    Southeast Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X