Tongueless

by Lau Yee-Wa, Jennifer Feeley (Translator)

Overview

A gripping psychological thriller that sheds light on the current political situation in Hong Kong.

Tongueless follows two rival teachers at a secondary school in Hong Kong who are instructed to switch from teaching in Cantonese to Mandarin—or lose their jobs. Apolitical and focusing on surviving and thriving in their professional environment, Wai and Ling each approach the challenge differently. Wai, awkward and unpopular, becomes obsessed with Mandarin learning; Ling, knowing how to please her superiors and colleagues, thinks she can tactfully dodge the Mandarin challenge by deploying her social savviness. Wai eventually crumples under the pressure and dies by suicide, leaving her colleague Ling to face seismic political and cultural change alone as she considers how far she will go to survive such a ruthlessly competitive work environment.

Sharp, darkly humorous, and politically pointed, Tongueless presciently engages with important issues facing Hong Kong today during which so much of the city’s uniqueness—especially its language—is at risk of being erased.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558613188
Publisher:	Feminist Press at CUNY, The
Publication date:	06/11/2024
Pages:	285
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Lau Yee-Wa is one of Hong Kong’s most exciting up-and-coming fiction authors. Lau began her literary career writing poetry at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where she obtained her BA in Chinese language and literature, and her Master’s degree in philosophy. Lau’s short story “The Shark”' won the prestigious Hong Kong Champion of the Awards for Creative Writing in Chinese in 2016. Tongueless has been highly praised by acclaimed Hong Kong authors including Chan Ho-Kei and Dorothy Tse. 

Jennifer Feeley  is the translator of Not Written Words: Selected Poetry of Xi Xi, Carnival of Animals: Xi Xi's Animal Poems, the White Fox series by Chen Jiatong, Wong Yi's chamber opera Women Like Us, and Mourning a Breast by Xi Xi. She holds a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures from Yale Universityand is the recipient of the 2017 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize and a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Tongueless

Winner of the 2024 PEN Translates Award

“A taut, chilling novel about the weaponization of language as a tool of oppression.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Tongueless shocked me as much as any masterpiece I have ever read.” —Chan Ho-Kei, author of The Borrowed

“Tongueless is a riveting horror novel that explores the psychic depths of two desperate secondary school teachers struggling to navigate a merciless society. Set against the backdrop of post-1997 Hong Kong, amid shifting social norms and language politics, Lau’s striking debut novel compels readers to confront the voices of dissent that have been polished into excessively smooth, mirror-like surfaces. In Feeley’s brilliant translation, Hong Kong’s cultural and linguistic nuances are vividly brought to the fore.” —Dorothy Tse, author of Owlish

“With fervor and aptitude, Tongueless portrays characters that are guileful and defenseless, repressed and vigorous. No matter what happens, they hold together both themselves and a world that is being wrenched apart by multiple forces. An enthralling novel.” —Yan Ge, author of Strange Beasts of China

“Darkly gleaming with claustrophobic terror and pitch-black humor, Tongueless picks away at the surface of Hong Kong to reveal the festering tensions that lie beneath, and skillfully depicts the relentless pressures that ordinary Hong Kongers come under.” —Jeremy Tiang, translator of Rouge Street

“A manifesto of language and morality. A psychological unraveling that reveals the ways we deceive ourselves and others. Tongueless is a slow-burn social horror that deftly captures the way human cruelty always returns to destroy its originator.” —Molly McGhee, author of Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind

“Insightful and investigative, Lau Yee-Wa explores the searing politics of a threatened tongue in Hong Kong with tact, terror, and empathy. She evokes a dangerously competitive world fueled by success, shopping, inflation of housing prices, educational hierarchy, and social status. It’s a timely portrayal of a city that has experienced a seismic shock and is grappling with the consequences of irreversible change.” —Kit Fan, author of Diamond Hill

From the Publisher

★ 2024-04-05
In Lau’s dark, provocative debut about two Chinese language teachers in an increasingly suppressed Hong Kong, politics becomes personal.

Two months after Wai’s gruesome suicide by an electric drill, her cubicle remains untouched. Even the bizarre mirrors that cover her desk and bookcase stay in place, a sight that the other teachers in the Chinese department at the Sing Din Secondary School avoid. But Ling, who sat closest to Wai, is reminded every afternoon when the sea of mirrors reflects the glare of the sunlight. Her life has changed dramatically since Wai’s death; forced to teach Wai’s classes, Ling finds that her workload has increased to the point that “she didn’t leave school until eight or nine o’clock each night.” Worse, her principal is pressuring her to take the LPAT, a test used to measure Chinese language teachers’ ability to teach in Mandarin. Many schools in Hong Kong are switching from teaching in the native Cantonese to the Mandarin of the Chinese mainland. The principal warns, “Competition is fierce. Ling, you’re smart. You understand what I’m getting at.” The author skillfully toggles the narrative between the present and the past to contrast the two teachers’ approaches to an unavoidable professional challenge. Awkward Wai alienates her colleagues by insisting on speaking Mandarin in staff meetings. Clever Ling’s social savviness, which enabled her to coast at the school for 10 years, is no longer enough to save her from mirroring her colleague’s downward spiral—unless she makes a radical change. The use of mirrors (the word is repeated more than 100 times throughout the novel) is a powerful metaphor, not only for Ling’s lack of self-reflection but also for a society that values surface appearances (designer brands and plastic surgery are popular topics of discussion in the teachers’ office). Translator Feeley’s concluding essay offers insightful context on Hong Kong’s current political situation.

A taut, chilling novel about the weaponization of language as a tool of oppression.

Kirkus Reviews