Chapter 6. Curriculum as cultural critique

In this chapter, Eddie Tay premises the practice and teaching of creative writing as operating within specific cultural and social parameters. Exploring tensions and anxieties that attend to the social, cultural and political landscape of Hong Kong, and presenting aspects of the work of Freire that may aid students in their engagement with their environment, Tay reads a range of student writing that demonstrates an awareness of social, political and cultural location, and which draws from Hong Kong culture as a resource, to crystalize the notion that creative writing contributes to the work of fostering an “imagined community” in Benedict Anderson’s sense of the term (Anderson 2006: 6).