RISING VIGOUR: Decoding Power Feminism in Selected Fictions of Shih-Li Kow

Arash Khoshsafa is currently a PhD candidate in English literature at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His main scholarly focus is on literary criticism and American fiction, especially dirty realists such as Richard Ford. In addition to translating fiction from English into Persian and vice versa and publishing in Iran and overseas, Arash writes fiction in Persian and English. He currently lives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

This brief monograph is a fresh analysis of Kow’s daring and unique prose, which has wonderfully distanced itself from mainstream Malaysian literature in English, from power feminism viewpoint with a specific focus on Naomi Wolf’s initiative principles by which Arash Khoshsafa discovers how different Shih-Li Kow’s fictions are in terms of characterisation and displaying a variety of current streams within women’s conditions in modern Malaysian society. Coining the term “layered femininity”, Khoshsafa has brought to light some buried layers of crucial feminine notions in Kow’s fiction which gravely need to be followed up in further studies.