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Being Colonized

by Gloria M. Tang

168 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #06-3071; ISBN 1-4251-1312-5; US$15.65, C$18.00, EUR12.86, £9.00

Vignettes of the author*s childhood and adulthood in HK; her experiences being colonized; her ambivalent attitude towards being colonized

About the Book

This book is about Hong Kong, the author, the English and their interaction. It is about the author growing up in the British Colony of Hong Kong and her experiences learning and being colonized by English. It is about her construction of reality. It is about people who have played a part in her colonization. Colonization starts by chance, by force of circumstances where the author willingly submits to being colonized to the extent of courting it. It is about the author's self discovery, her self definition and her ambivalent attitude towards being colonized.

It is about the British colony of HK and its impact on the author. It is about the return of HK to China and the ambivalent attitude of different people towards the transition. It is about the effect the change of sovereignty has on the English as the language of instruction in schools in HK.

While she is dubious about the publication of this book, parts of which may be sensitive, she does not apologize for the writing of it. The writing is cathartic. The process of writing has brought laughter and tears to the author and a multitude of emotions. Among them, the joy of remembering - remembering occurrences of close to 60 years ago, happenings of today and nostalgic moments in between. Though the happenings are re-enacted against a backdrop of history, dates have been left out to avoid inaccuracies.

About the Author

Gloria Tang was born in the British colony of Hong Kong where she received a colonial education in an Anglo-Chinese school. She earned a bachelor's degree in English language and literature, a master's degree in education, a diploma in education and an advanced diploma in learning and teaching at the University of Hong Kong. She served as teacher and teacher educator in Hong Kong for years before migrating to Vancouver. She successfully completed a doctoral programme in second language acquisition in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia where she luckily secured a position as assistant professor and was later promoted to associate professor. Her dream has always been to become an author! As a child she dreamed of authoring a 'forbidden book' on a controversial topic. That dream she never realized partly because she stopped being a child and should know better than to nurture such a fantasy and partly because she gained enough self knowledge to accept with a sigh that a controversial book was beyond her. She was just not enough of a risk taker! Besides, as an academic she was too occupied writing politically and ethically correct papers. She stopped entertaining the idea of controversial books which might belong to authors other than education professors. Perhaps not! Professors enjoy academic freedom which is one notch up the ladder of freedom of expression! Although education professors should know better than to corrupt young minds with forbidden books! Anyway, the dream of authoring a controversial book was forgotten. She has, however, published a number of academic papers in refereed journals as well as two books titled Voice of My Heart (2005) and Gloria's Travels.