XU XI 許 素 細

Join Xu for her lecture at La Salle College of the Arts on the problem of English for writers and world literature, especially in the context of contemporary Singapore literature.  Her discussion is drawn from her presentation and conference paper for the 2023 Nobel Symposium on Literature as well as related work on the subject in the context of Asian and Hong Kong literature, literary translation, and the teaching of creative writing. This event is free and open to the public.  Scan QR code to sign up.

Wednesday 5 March 7:00pm-8:30pm

Smart Room, Ngee Ann Kongsi Library, Bik F Level 4 #F405

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Cultural Transnational Identity and the Writer

What does it mean to be an Anglophone writer who is from beyond the centers of Anglophone culture?  If you write in English but are not from a primarily monolingual Anglophone world where English is the official or dominant language, what cultural identity do you adopt as "the writer."   In particular, if your concerns, interests and literary content are centered around a transnational life or identity, how does that complicate what you want to write or feel you must write?  Xu Xi 許素細 will speak about her own experience writing and publishing as a Hong Kong-New York transnational, whose footprints are stamped into both cities.  Now that she no longer has a home in her birth city Hong Kong, her cultural identity is further complicated, resulting in new and sometimes unexpected directions for her creative writing.  

Thursday 6 March 7:00pm-8:30pm

Singapore Book Council, Training Room - admission by donation - register at this link

Mongrel Intl. is now the imprint for new editiions of several of Xu's out-of-print titles, published as E Books and paperbacks. Currently available from all Ebook retailers: (click link under the title for further book information and to purchase directly)

Chinese Walls novel, 2nd E Book edition, January 2025

Daughters of Hui novella & three stories, 2nd E Book edition, January 2025

When her debut novel Chinese Walls first appeared in 1994, Xu was praised by the Far Eastern Economic Review as "a welcome new voice in the field of Asian fiction writers (who) rides the waves beautifully.”  Through the seven stories in this novel-in-stories, readers were brought behind the walls of a Hong Kong family, exploding all its secrets.  The controversial sexual content was startling at the time, but Xu's spare prose and quiet style impressed the Eastern Express who said it was “. . . like listening to a close friend talking about her life, her family, her love and her frustrations.” The novel is a close look at the way intimacy draws people together and pushes them apart, as echoed in the epigraph from a Confucius analect:

The Master said, "Men are close to one another by nature. They diverge as a result of repeated practice."

The Analects Book IV (translation D.C. Lau)

Daughters of Hui, her sophomore title comprises a novella Danny's Snake and three short stories, featuring four unrelated Chinese women surnamed Hui 許, which is the author's own name.  It was extremely well received and named an Asiaweek 1996 best book on Asia.   The International Examiner commended Xu's ”impressive ability to create believable characters that are fully human in their inner contradictions and complexity” and Window magazine said “(she) tackles taboo subject matter for Chinese women, like sexuality, adultery and seduction as an art form.”  The epigraph from Lao Tzu poses the question:

Your name or your person / Which is dearer?

Tao Te Ching Chapter XLIV Book Two (translated by D.C. Lau)

After the first print editions from Asia 2000 lapsed out of print, Chameleon Press re-issued a second compendium print edition with both titles in 2002. This included a preface by the scholar of Asian literature in English, Michael Ingham of Lingnan University who observed “Whilst it may not be particularly politically correct in post-handover Hong Kong to assert the values of linguistic and cultural pluralism among ethnically Chinese denizens of this hybrid Chinese city, the fact remains that it is often possible to tackle taboo subjects and employ a critical idiiom in a literary lingua franca without the deep cultural connections, inhibitions and linguistic hierarchies consonant with the use of standard Chinese.”

These reissued E Books allow readers a backwards glimpse to a Hong Kong that was, and reconfirms, once again, how, as Asiaweek said, that there's ”no question (Xu) gets to the heart of the matter.”

On December 14, 2024, Xu Xi officially received her honorary doctorate degree (DFA - Doctorate of Fine Arts) awarded by her undergraduate alma mater, the State University of New York at Plattsburgh.  Read a summary of her commencement remarks in the account of the ceremony. 

”City Notes with iPhone” published in Press II Pause, Volume 9: two ”snapshots” in images and prose of a longview take on transnational living  read at this link

The Art and Craft of Asian Stories: A Writer's Guide and Anthology by Robin Hemley & Xu Xi

”Fiction Remix” a chapter from her memoir-in-progress The Work Book, appears in the latest issue of New England Review (Vol 43.1). An excerpt was featured at LitHub, click here to read “Xu Xi on Living the Transnational Life”

Teaching Creative Writing in Asia, ed. Darryl Whetter includes Xu's essay ”Compromised Tongues: That Wrong Language for the Creative Writing We Teach in Asia”

A recent issue of West Trestle Review republishes Xu's 2001 story “Democracy” that is surprisingly prescient for the state of democracy in the world today.

“2016: The Political Year” new “shaggy fiction”chapter from a novel-in-progress Memories of You named a Glimmer Train finalist, July 8, 2017

“The Writing Race” Asian American Literary Review essay “Speak No Evil” response to MFA vs. POC, Jan 11, 2015

An essay reflecting on Hong Kong today "永久性香港 Forever This Hong Kong" at First Person with Michael Judge

All About Skin

Edited by Jina Ortiz & Rochelle Spencer, with a foreword by Helena Maria Viramontes, this exciting new anthology is, according to Pulitzer fiction author Junot Diaz, "electrifying and absolutely necessary." Xu’s work is the title story and the volume features twenty-seven stories by women of color. Published in November, 2014 by the University of Wisconsin press.

All About Skin was named a Ms. Magazine 2014 must-read feminist book of the year.