Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0511-6235
Abstract
Malaysian Chinese author Tash Aw’s novel Five Star Billionaire narrates the stories of five Malaysian Chinese individuals striving to establish themselves in Shanghai by seeking opportunities for advancement, economic prosperity, and personal transformation. Drawing from Dan Shen’s narratological theory of dual narrative dynamics, which states how texts can have overt and covert narrative progressions, this article elucidates the novel’s hidden agenda by exploring how the characters’ experiences in contemporary China are intricately connected to their past in Malaysia. If interpreted according to the narrative’s overt progression, Five Star Billionaire depicts individuals who are enticed and ensnared by the forces of neoliberalism and capitalism in contemporary China. However, by analyzing the novel’s peripheral narratives, this study reveals that these narratives serve as a poignant critique of intersecting issues of class and ethnicity in Malaysia. By dramatizing personal stories within the sociopolitical context, the narrative highlights how Malaysia’s racially inflected politics have left enduring impacts on those marginalized Chinese Malaysians, who grapple with existential challenges in this multifaceted socio-political context. The main narrative’s covert progression, together with the novel’s peripheral narrative, offers a critical reflection on class and ethnicity within the backdrop of ethnocentric nationalism in Malaysia and underscoring the failure of national policies to address these persistent issues.
Recommended Citation
Miao, Chi
(2025)
"Whose Story Is It? Postcolonial Racialization, Social (Im)mobility, and Crony
Capitalism in Tash Aw’s Five Star Billionaire,"
Kritika Kultura:
No.
48, Article 5.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13185/1656-152X.2201
Available at:
https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss48/5
