Reparation in Sinophone literature (Writing Chinese: A Journal of Contemporary Sinophone Literature)

Call for Papers: Reparation in Sinophone Literature

Special issue of Writing Chinese: A Journal of Contemporary Sinophone Literature

We are currently inviting abstracts for an upcoming Special Issue on “Reparation in Sinophone Literatures”. We are delighted that this issue will be guest-edited by Dr Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, Editor-in-Chief of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Honorary Researcher at the Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library at the University of Toronto, and former Senior Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Cultural Practices of Reparation (CURE), Saarland University.

The deadline for abstracts for this Special Issue is 15 October 2026, while full papers are expected by 28 February 2027.

This special issue aims to explore how Sinophone literary texts across geographies, genres, and historical periods engage with the concept of reparation—broadly construed as acts of redress, healing, restoration, and ethical reckoning. From the scars of collective trauma to the legacies of cultural erasure, Sinophone writers have used literature to confront sites of rupture both within the Sinosphere and beyond. These texts ask how what was broken might be repaired: how to acknowledge historical wrongs, mend fragmented memories, and reclaim silenced voices. With a transnational and comparative focus, the issue will bring together scholarship on Chinese-language literary works from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and the wider diaspora, investigating shared and divergent strategies of literary “repair.” In our time of irreparable social and ecological damage, there is a growing scholarly interest in “reparative processes” as a basis for shaping a common future. Literature, as a form of cultural practice, plays a central role in imagining such processes and making sense of the tension between past destruction and future hope.

Crucially, Sinophone literatures do not merely reflect suffering; they also imagine reparative gestures—acts within the narrative that attempt to bind up wounds or restore balance. These may include representations of apology and forgiveness, the revival of obliterated cultural practices, or the preservation of endangered languages and memories. Such narratives raise pressing questions: Can writing serve as a form of cultural reparation when political remedies fall short? Does bearing witness in fiction help restore dignity to victims and survivors, or might it reopen old wounds? Are there culturally specific notions of restitution (for example, Confucian remembrance or indigenous ritual) that inflect these works? By comparing these varied literatures, the issue seeks to map a recurring yet locally inflected impulse to “make whole” what has been shattered. I aim to interrogate not only how Sinophone texts articulate loss and injustice, but how they resist despair by enacting repair through literary form—across linguistic, historical, and ideological boundaries.

Specific research topics might include (but are not limited to):

·         Trauma, Memory, and Narrative Repair

·         Literature as Redress

·         Language and Cultural Erasure

·         Postcolonial and Transnational Perspectives

·         Gendered Dimensions of Reparation

·         Intergenerational Healing

·         Reparative Aesthetics and Genres

·         Ritual, Religion, and Spiritual Reparation

·         The Politics of Memory

·         Translation and World Literary Circulation

The deadline for abstracts for this Special Issue is Thursday 15 October 2026, while full papers are expected by Sunday 28 February 2027.

Please send an abstract (no more than 300 words, excluding the title) and a short biographical note (no more than 100 words) to tammyho@asiancha.com and writingchinese@leeds.ac.uk by Thursday 15 October 2026 for consideration.

Notification of the outcome will be issued by the end of October 2026. Authors of successful abstracts will be invited to submit full papers by Sunday 28 February 2027, along with further guidelines for submission. Full papers will then be subject to the normal peer-review process.

For any enquiries relating to submissions for this Special Issue, please contact Dr Tammy Lai-Ming Ho at tammyho@asiancha.com