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movement, and the innocent uninvolved citizens as well. In a memoir-like fragment somewhat randomly chosen from the volume My House Has Two Doors, we read:
And so the Emergency began. It would justify the suspending of all rights, giving the police (Special Branch) total power to arrest, search, detain anyone without trial and indefinitely, to disband all trade unions, arrest trade unionists, ban demonstrations, mete out the death sentence for 'possession of dangerous weapons,' which included school penknives, to apply censorship in all its forms, to impose curfews, to shoot suspects on sight.
There are a vast number of Han Suyin's excellent essays also, which had originally been published basically in the magazines of South East Asia (e.g., in the Hong Kong journal Eastern Horizon) and tackle various different sociopolitical problems of former colonies, generated just in the course of their colonial past. Luckily enough, a good deal of these largely dispersed essays were saved from oblivion by a rather recent re-editing them in a book entitled Tigers and Butterflies - Selected Writings on Politics, Culture and Society (London, 1990). The very titles of some of these essays are eloquent enough to remind us of Han Suyin's steady interests and passions: Social Changes in Asia (1960), The Aborigines (1961), Relations between East and West (1963), The Rich vs the Poor (1964), or The Troubles Miscalled Racial (1965).
The entirety of Han Suyin's literary achievements - and especially those parts which tackle predominantly colonial threads - have still to be sufficiently investigated and discussed. One reason for this situation seems to be the vagueness of average Western opinion in the matter of colonialism as sociopathology of the world's not so very distant past. In this particular context, Han Suyin's profound analyses followed by very moderate conclusions ought to be studied very attentively indeed, whereas her remarkably open, yet self-restrained and balanced attitude can only be gratefully acknowledged, admired and revered.
32
movement, and the innocent uninvolved citizens as well. In a memoir- like fragment somewhat randomly chosen from the volume My House Has Two Doors, we read:
And so the Emergency began. It would justify the suspending of all rights, giving the police (Special Branch) total power to arrest, search, detain anyone without trial and indefinitely, to disband all trade unions, arrest trade unionists, ban demonstrations, mete out the death sentence for 'possession of dangerous weapons,' which included school penknives, to apply censorship in all its forms, to impose curfews, to shoot suspects on sight.
There are a vast number of Han Suyin's excellent essays also, which had originally been published basically in the magazines of South East Asia (e.g., in the Hong Kong journal Eastern Horizon) and tackle various different sociopolitical problems of former colonies, generated just in the course of their colonial past. Luckily enough, a good deal of these largely dispersed essays were saved from oblivion by a rather recent re-editing them in a book entitled Tigers and Butterflies - Selected Writings on Politics, Culture and Society (London, 1990). The very titles of some of these essays are eloquent enough to remind us of Han Suyin's steady interests and passions: Social Changes in Asia (1960), The Aborigines (1961), Relations between East and West (1963), The Rich vs the Poor (1964), or The Troubles Miscalled Racial (1965).
The entirety of Han Suyin's literary achievements - and especially those parts which tackle predominantly colonial threads - have still to be sufficiently investigated and discussed. One reason for this situation seems to be the vagueness of average Western opinion in the matter of colonialism as sociopathology of the world's not so very distant past. In this particular context, Han Suyin's profound analyses followed by very moderate conclusions ought to be studied very attentively indeed, whereas her remarkably open, yet self-restrained and balanced attitude can only be gratefully acknowledged, admired and revered.
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