ABSTRACT

This chapter describes unique aesthetics of Sinophone Malaysian author Chang Kuei-hsing in two novels, Elephant Herd and Monkey Cup, as representations of Sinophone settler colonialism in the Sarawak rainforest in Borneo. It examines how Chang's novels portray the clamoring, proliferating identities in the Sinophone Sarawak settler frontier. His novels foreground the decay of the Sinophone settler hegemony after decades of violent conflicts, as their past influence is now undercut by nationwide discriminatory policies. The chapter explores both creolization and the New World baroque are invoked by Latin American artists, authors, and critics such as Angel Guido and Alejo Carpentier to describe a syncretic style of cultural production, which are stimulating lens for reading Chang's Sinitic-language texts. It compares "creolization"—a linguistic, social, or cultural process of mutual becoming and new assemblages—and "the baroque"—the stylistic display of uncertain movements between incompatible elements at cultural contact zones.