HMES 5143 MALAYSIAN FICTION

ASSIGNMENT
MAY 2021 SEMESTER

NOTE ON COURSE ASSESSMENT

Assessment for this course is 100% assignment based. There is no final examination.

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

1. Use Times New Roman or Arial, 12-point font, with 1.5-line spacing in A4 format.

2. Ensure that the assignment you submit is paginated.

3. The cover sheet of your assignment must contain the following information: Course code
and name / Semester / Your full name and student number / Your email address and
mobile number.

4. Present your responses to the tasks in a single portfolio file (PDF or Word format).
Adhere to the following structure:

i. Cover sheet
ii. Response to Task 1
iii. Response to Task 2
iv. Response to Task 3
v. Response to Task 4
vi. Response to Task 5
vii. Works Cited section formatted in the MLA style

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5. Submit your portfolio in a single file (PDF or Word) online AND by email to your course
facilitator by 7 AUG 2021.

6. Late submission without prior permission will be penalized with a two-mark deduction per
day.

7. Any assignment detected to have been plagiarised will be marked down, failed outright,
and/or referred to the University’s disciplinary committee for further action. To learn more
about avoiding plagiarism, consult such sites as https://style.mla.org/plagiarism-and-
academic-dishonesty/

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COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES

The tasks set for this assignment are designed to help you meet the following course
learning outcomes (CLOs):

CLO1: appraise the historical, cultural and other contexts of Malaysian literary production
[C5, PLO2]

CLO2: assess Malaysian fiction from a range of literary perspectives [C5, PLO2]

CLO3: relate the various impulses behind the production of Malaysian fiction to own
personal values [A4, PLO9]

Note that the above CLOs supersede earlier versions listed elsewhere.

SUMMARY OF TASKS

Task 1 [CLO1]: Researching and Appraising Malayan Writing in English [20 marks]

Task 2 [CLO2]: The Return: “A Truly Malaysian Consciousness and Society” [20 marks]

Task 3 [CLO2]: Green is the Colour: Interrogating “May 13” [20 marks]

Task 4 [CLO2]: The Gift of Rain: Restorative Justice vs. Retributive Justice [20 marks]

Task 5 [CLO3]: From Literary Impulses to Personal Values [20 marks]

CLO WEIGHTAGE

CLO1: 20%

CLO2: 60%

CLO3: 20%

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 TASK 1 [CLO1]

RESEARCHING AND APPRAISING MALAYAN WRITINGS IN ENGLISH

[20 MARKS]

Review Topic 1 of your Course Study Guide and the prescribed readings, before zooming in
on writings produced prior to independence. A number of works, authors, styles, genres,
publications, movements, affiliations, and thematic concerns are covered.

Beyond the given readings, explore further the pre-independence scene. Leverage on the
internet to locate relevant resources. Read widely before strategically selecting TWO pre-
independence works that you find particularly noteworthy and representative of the era.
There are no restrictions to the genres you may choose, e.g., short story, novel, poetry,
essay, etc. You may find the works reproduced here useful or of interest to you:

http://www.pulauujong.org/straits-chinese-stories/

Then write an essay in approximately 800 words on the two works you selected.
Provide the full bibliographic details of each work before summarising each in about 100
words. Explain why they are noteworthy and how they are representative of the era. It is
compulsory for you to provide working URLs of the two selected works.

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 TASK 2 [CLO2]

THE RETURN – “A TRULY MALAYSIAN CONSCIOUSNESS AND SOCIETY”

[20 MARKS]

Read “‘Into the Light’: In Conversation with K. S. Maniam” by Sharmani Patricia Gabriel
(2018). A PDF copy is in your myInspire folder; it is also accessible here:

https://journals.iium.edu.my/asiatic/index.php/ajell/article/view/1336/849

In the interview, Maniam makes the following point:

I want to see and hopefully help in the formation of a truly Malaysian consciousness
and society [...] where race, colour and cultural differences didn’t matter, only the
sense of belonging to the country did. But as I observed the country take more racist
and cultural directions up to 1969, when the May 13 riots broke out, I was utterly
disappointed, if not devastated. Perhaps that was why I wrote The Return, which was
published slightly over a decade later, to understand and perhaps discover, at least
from the perspective of the migrant Indian community, the feelings, dreams and
hopes it had for the country.

In your informed option, to what extent does The Return reflect or testify to Maniam’s
endeavour in forming “a truly Malaysian consciousness and society”? Write a reflective essay
on this in about 800 words. Be sure to closely reference the novel to substantiate your
argument.

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 TASK 3 [CLO2]

GREEN IS THE COLOUR – INTERROGATING “MAY 13” [20 MARKS]

Write an essay in about 800 words in response to the following prompt:

Green is the Colour deals with May 13, a watershed moment in Malaysian history. In
your informed reading, to what extent is it successful in working through the
contentious issues it raises? What are these issues, and how would you justify its
success or lack of? Closely reference the novel in your response.

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 TASK 4 [CLO2]

THE GIFT OF RAIN – RESTORATIVE JUSTICE VS RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE

[20 MARKS]

Read the journal article by Kelly Yin titled “Queering Imperial History: The Ethics of
Reconciliation in Tan Twan Eng’s The Gift of Rain” (2018). A copy of the PDF is in your
course myVLE.

In the article, Yin argues that, thematically, “Tan’s novel invests in restorative rather than
retributive justice for historical violations (p. 10).

What do you understand by the statement above? How are “restorative justice” and
“retributive justice” differentiated? How, precisely, is restorative justice enacted in The Gift of
Rain, according to Yin? And to what extent do you agree or disagree with Yin’s argument?

Respond to these issues in an 800-word essay.

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 TASK 5 [CLO3]

FROM LITERARY IMPULSES TO PERSONAL VALUES [20 MARKS]

This task gives you an opportunity to produce a summative reflective essay revolving around
this particular course that you are taking, as well as your personal connection to the many
issues thrown up by the literary texts you have studied.

Reflective writing is a purposeful activity of writing about one’s own experiences and
responses to, for instance, what one has learned in a course undertaken. This genre of
writing comes in a variety of formats, but for the purposes of this exercise, think of what you
will write as an extended essay with a conventional academic structure of about 800 words,
in which the personal pronoun ‘I’ is used extensively. As example:

“In this reflective essay, I will first present [...] before turning to discuss [...] To begin, I
came into this course at the start of the semester thinking that it would be about [...]
Little did I expect it would [...] Of the many issues thrown up by texts which my peers
and I studied, the ones that resonated most personally to me are [...] I believe these
issues are meaningful to me because in my own personal experience [...].”

Specifically, your reflective essay should focus on selected themes and issues that you
encountered in any of the prescribed texts (The Return, Green is the Colour, and The Gift of
Rain) and the personal meanings you derived from these literary encounters. The questions
you should respond to include:

 Which of the themes and issues you encountered in the literary texts speak to you
the most? Why are they meaningful to you?
 Do these themes and issues affirm or conflict with your personal values? How so?
What are these values of yours?
 What kind of challenges did you encounter in coming to grips with the texts and
the themes and issues they deal with? How did you deal with these challenges?
What have you learned from them?
 What lessons, insights, and values have you acquired from having undertaken
this course? Has this course turned out to be what you expected at the outset?
Do you think that you now have a better understanding of Malaysian literature? In
what ways? And how does this course fit your understanding of “English
Studies”?
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 How do you think what you have learned from this course may be personally
applied across contexts: intellectual, professional, social, aesthetic, and so on?
 How would you like to see this course evolve for future learners? What would you
want to keep and what changes would you like to introduce? Why?

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 ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
FOR ALL TASKS

1 2 3 Total Marks

Rating / Criteria Task Response Textual Support Language Use

/ Weightage

[Max. 10] [Max. 5] [Max. 5] [Max. 20]

Excellent [9-10] [5] [5]

Substantively Suitably high Full mastery of all

addresses all given frequency of aspects of language
issues strategic use of use in writing,
textual support that including grammar
All responses are is fully referenced (incl. sentence
concise and formation, word
penetrative, Textual support order and form,
demonstrating fully justifies tenses, etc.) and
critical and argument or claim mechanics (incl.
rigorous spelling,
engagement punctuation).
Addresses most of
the given issues Rare minor errors, if
well present, occur only
as ‘slips’

Good [7-8] [4] [4]

Most responses are Frequent use of General mastery of

insightful, mostly suitable all aspects of
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 1 2 3 Total Marks

Rating / Criteria Task Response Textual Support Language Use

/ Weightage

[Max. 10] [Max. 5] [Max. 5] [Max. 20]

demonstrating textual support that language use in

engagement is mostly writing, including
referenced grammar (incl.
sentence formation,
Textual support word order and
justifies argument or form, tenses, etc.)
claim and mechanics
(incl. spelling,
punctuation).

Errors are few,

minor, non-
systemic, and non-
distracting

Satisfactory [5-6] [3] [3]

Addresses many of Uses some Satisfactory

the given issues, adequate textual mastery of some
although some may support that may be aspects of language
be under-examined referenced to some use in writing,
extent including grammar
Responses are (incl. sentence
generally Textual support at formation, word
satisfactory, times justifies order and form,
although some may argument or claim tenses, etc.) and
not be based on to a degree mechanics (incl.
close engagement spelling,
punctuation).

Some errors may be

jarring and
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 1 2 3 Total Marks

Rating / Criteria Task Response Textual Support Language Use

/ Weightage

[Max. 10] [Max. 5] [Max. 5] [Max. 20]

distracting

Insufficient [3-4] [2] [2]

Insufficient Insufficient textual Low mastery of

engagement with support that may be almost all aspects of
the given issues; under- language use in
some are not acknowledged writing, including
addressed at all grammar (incl.
Textual support only sentence formation,
Responses may be tangentially word order and
off-tangent, justifies argument or form, tenses, etc.)
reflecting potential claim, if at all and mechanics
misreading of task (incl. spelling,
punctuation).

Errors are plentiful

and distracting

Unsatisfactory [0-2] [0-1] [0-1]

Unsatisfactory Barely any textual Unsatisfactory

engagement with support used mastery of all
the given issues; aspects of language
some are either not Where present, use in writing,
addressed or are textual support only including grammar
poorly addressed tenuously relates (incl. sentence
to argument or formation, word
Unsatisfactory claim, if at all order and form,
responses; tenses, etc.) and
responses are mechanics (incl.
mostly off-tangent, spelling,
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 1 2 3 Total Marks

Rating / Criteria Task Response Textual Support Language Use

/ Weightage

[Max. 10] [Max. 5] [Max. 5] [Max. 20]

reflecting serious punctuation).

misreading of the
task Replete with
distracting errors

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