Green is the Colour

Lloyd Fernando

Green is the Colour

IntroductionFernando is the first Malaysian to be a Professor of English

He played a significant role in promoting Malaysian literary status in his illustrious career at University of Malaya's Department of English

Triple Disaster Published in 1993, the novel centres on

Yun Ming and Siti Sara falling in love with each other in post-May 13, 1969.

Both are from different racial backgrounds and faiths and both are also married at the same time to different people

Thus both are committing adultery during a very traumatic period of Malaysian history

In addition, Siti Sara's father in the novel is a respected religious figure.

Fernando's novel was considered the first English novel to deal with the May 13 incident

It remains the only novel that offers a possible solution to inter-racial conflict and race relations in 21st century Malaysia

Issuesthe importance and relevance of Fernando's novel to nation-building and to Life itself the May 13 racial riotsthe New Economic Policyinter-racial relationshipsreligionracial integration in Malaysia

Identify:

The complexities of the love-hate relationship between Yun Ming and Siti Sara

The amoral, heinous, and Machiavellian Panglima, an up and coming government official bent on creating a "homogenous" society devoid of cultural differences and religious diversity

What fear, hate, jealousy, ignorance, fanaticism, and intolerance could do to multi-racial Malaysia by people like Panglima

The different manifestations of the theme of Power

The tolerance of Siti Sara's father, who saw beyond race, religion, and status, and blessed Yun Ming and Sara's relationship.

Witness:Fernando's vision of a world free of prejudice,

religious bigotry, and cultural intolerance. A world where green is the colour of

innocence, new hope, a new beginning, a primeval and natural state of existence - a return to Nature.

And like Nature that does not discriminate, paradise on earth is not elusive but attainable if individuals love one another indiscriminately like Yun Ming and Siti Sara.

ConclusionPerhaps this is why, bearing the present circumstances, that Fernando's timeless novel is more relevant and appealing in the present than when it was published in 1993.

(Adapted from David C.E. Tneh in The Sun)

Excerpts from reviews of Green is the Colour A sensitive novel about racial and religious

tolerance set against the shadow of the 1969 racial riots in Kuala Lumpur.Koh Buck Song, The Straits Times, July 10, 1993

Lloyd Fernando has exactly recounted (the) terrifying experience many of us must have lived through those awful months. For me, it is this shared nightmare…that is the ‘objective correlative’ of May 13 1969 and the finest, lasting achievement of Green is the Colour.Edward Dorall, New Straits Times, 1993

Fernando seeks to strip away the Englishness from English, to find a uniquely Malaysian prose voice…This is evident in his remarkable ear for Malaysian English, never sinking into caricature, but establishing a familiar flow…The best thing about it(the novel), and the reason I recommend it, is its picture of a society aware of its ‘roots’ but is simultaneously rootless.Amir Muhammad, New Straits Times, August 18, 1993

My intention is to argue that, in narrating the contesting visions of the nation, Fernando suggest ways of formulating/inventing a new collective identity of ‘Bangsa Malaysia’ in this multi-racial, multi-religious, multi lingual, as well as modernising and yet tradition bound, nation-state. His vision is based on the rejection of all totalitarian, exclusivist models of nationalism that allow hierarchies in the dominant discourses of race, religion and gender for one of interplay and mutuality of cultures…Professor MA Quayum,Imagining ‘Bangsa Malaysia’: Race, Religion and Gender in Lloyd Fernando’s Green is the Colour

After the communal riots of May 13th, 1969 there was no wide-scale communal strife in Malaysia such as is depicted in Green is the Colour. Nonetheless, Lloyd Fernando’s vision of post 1969 Malaysia earns its validity as a bold attempt to present the fissures within Malaysia’s modernity.Wong Soak Koon,‘Unveiling Malaysia’s Modernity and Ethnicity: Lloyd Fernando’s Green is the Colour, in Risking Malaysia” Culture, Politics and Identity. Eds. Maznah Mohamed & Wong Soak Koon, Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi 2001

In his novel, Green is the Colour, Lloyd Fernando explores undercurrents of our multiethnic society with insight and honesty. He shows a deep understanding of minds shaped by different cultures and faiths, and of conflicts that can create a nightmare world when tolerance breaks down. This is a poignant story of tender humanity struggling against the cold inhumanity of closed minds – a story relevant to all of us today.Adibah Amin