Reflection on Malaysian Literature in English by Mohd Syahir B. Hamzahtulhikmal

Reflection on Malaysian Literature in English (MLIE)

Obviously before I learn MLIE, I have inadequate information on what is MLIE because; before this I only learn and know about few Malaysian piece that have been translated from Malaysia Language to English Language which I learned in secondary school and some of the western literature and writer such as Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson and many more that I learnt in the past two years. In general I know that MLIE is the ground where Malaysian writer writes about Malaysian issue in English language. The English language that being used usually have Malaysian language element embedded in it.

After I heard of the existence of MLIE, the desire to know more about MLIE emerges. There are a lot of question struck into my mind concerning MLIE such as why did I never heard about this field? Why did I never notice about our nation literature? Who are the writers? Do they gain (money) a lot on their work? Do they have any problem in their work field? What are the issue that being discuss? Does their work being recognize by the outsider? This entire question runs through my head at that very moment, but I think the most important question is what the future hold for MLIE?

` For the past few months, I have join MLIE class. The class is becoming interesting by time to time. As I learn MLIE, the situation of literature in English language in our homeland becoming comprehensible. My entire question on MLIE was answered. The situation of MLIE was crucial at the moment when after post Independence because the appearance of two act that is National Language Act 1967 and the Amendment Act 1971 that made the writer to felt alienated and marginalized. The effect of this situation is some of the writers migrate to other country and some of them change to writing in Malaysia Language. But after Dr. Mahathir, the 4th Prime Minister of Malaysia proposed the idea of Vision 2020; the importance of English Language came back to catch up with the developed country and to be global. Another situation that the MLIE writer have to encounter is the freedom of speech. A writer in Malaysia write about many issue that happen in this country but there are some issue that is forbidden to spoke and discuss as the means not to influence the reader about the wrong idea such as issue that relate to the government. In addition there are situation where a work that written in English language is difficult to be publish than work written in Malaysian language. This has limited the production of MLIE.

There are several way how I learn MLIE, one of them is by using the previous knowledge on literature and apply it on MLIE. For your information, the sources and validity of MLIE is limited. If I want to know about the Western literature I would just search it on internet but if it is MLIE the availability of the particular work information is very limited. So to cover this weakness, I take another action that is to buy the book itself. In my opinion it is not a waste to buy these books because it can enrich our mind with knowledge some of the books make us more aware about the situation in Malaysia. The last resort how I learn MLIE is to ask my lecturer who act as a facilitator to help us understand better.

As a conclusion, I as a student majoring in literature have to take part in the effort to take MLIE to the higher level.

By Mohd Syahir B. Hamzahtulhikmal