Skin, intimacy and authenticity: Literary representations of Anglo-Burmese women in The Lacquer Lady
Published in International Journal of Postcolonial Studies
The Lacquer Lady, by F. Tennyson Jesse, is a rare example of a novel set in colonial Burma with a mixed-race, Anglo-Burmese protagonist, yet is overlooked by postcolonial literary critics.
Anglo-Burmese skin always intimates. It alludes to sexual transgression and to the other. It stretches the idea of skin and what may or may not be contained within it. It connects to and stands in for other skins (where skin delineates the limit of or is a metaphor for a subject). Through this continuous allusion, this contingency, it complicates rather than clarifies difference.