Wong Phui Nam

Wong Phui Nam, a leading Anglophone poet in Southeast Asia, was born on 20 September 1935, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His father, Wong Tak Wah, was of Peranakan stock – a fourth-generation descendent of a taikong (captain of a Chinese junk) who had settled in Malaysia after his ship ran aground near Malacca and got damaged beyond repair. His mother was a first-generation Malaysian Chinese, the daughter of a boatman in Canton, who was brought to Malaysia along with Wong’s maternal grandmother’s sister in a marriage deal which allowed the bride to bring her sister and some of her children along with her from China to Malaysia. After his marriage, Wong’s father detached himself from his Peranakan background, learnt Cantonese from his wife and became, as Wong explains, “more Cantonese than the Chinese.” He would speak only Cantonese at home and worshipped the traditional Chinese deities.