Speak Still by Wing Lam Tong

Speak Still by Wing Lam Tong

Speak Still confronts colonial silencing by asking out loud: why do non-native speakers of English feel estranged from the English language, despite having known it since childhood? Is it possible for us to own this silence? If so, how can we find our eloquence from our experience of speechlessness? How can we bring the foreign language home?

Blending personal narrative and cultural criticism, Speak Still takes Tong’s bilingual experience in Hong Kong and the UK as a point of departure and reflects on the meaning of language, selfhood, and belonging. Through poignant observations of everyday life as it is experienced between languages, Tong conceptualises a possibility to communicate and connect beyond words: by reclaiming silence as an interlocutor that interrupts cultural homogeneity and creates space for the unheard.

Speak Still shows that this silence, indeed, speaks volumes.

Wing Lam Tong (湯穎琳) is a writer, educator, and former lawyer from Hong Kong, currently living in London. Writing in both Chinese and English, her work has appeared in Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, the Asia Art Archive’s IDEAS Journal, The Oxonian Review, and elsewhere. She holds a BA (Literary Studies) and LLB from the University of Hong Kong, and a Master’s in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Oxford. Her research and writing explore womanhood, in-betweenness, senses of belonging, and everyday life. She believes in finding strength in softness.