Hong Kong ritrovata. La riscoperta di una città postcoloniale tra memoria e nostalgia in Xu Xi

Hong Kong occupies a marginal position in anglophone postcolonial studies, which has traditionally privileged regions such as Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean. This neglect is particularly striking given Hong Kong’s history as one of the most prominent colonies of the British Empire. It is within this overlooked space that the writing of Hong Kong anglophone author Xu Xi unfolds. Her literary output navigates fragmented spatialities and temporalities, capturing the estrangement of exile and the astonishment of return. For Xu Xi, returning to Hong Kong after years of voluntary exile in the United States is not a simple homecoming, but an encounter charged with stupefaction and wonder. The city of her youth, once intimate and familiar, now stands unrecognisable, reshaped by the relentless surge of urbanisation and the weight of the handover to the People’s Republic of China. This paper positions itself at the intersection of postcolonial studies and memory studies, drawing on theories of memory and nostalgia, identity, and spatial belonging to understand how wonder – understood as astonishment, estrangement, enchantment, and also unsettlement – operates within the anglophone literature of postcolonial Hong Kong. By analysing passages from Evanescent Isles: From My City- Village (2008) and Dear Hong Kong: An Elegy for a City (2017), I explore how the experience of return is mediated through feelings of estrangement, awe, and reverie. In her writing, the city’s transformation renders the experience of rediscovery uncanny: familiar streets acquire a surreal resonance and memory clings to the fragments of places that no longer exist. In this context, wonder is not always celebratory, but critical, nostalgic, and often painful. Through a close reading of selected passages, I examine how Xu Xi expresses this astonishment, confronting the emotional vertigo of return with a profoundly altered city. I investigate how these shifts are not incidental but structural, shaped by the political rupture of the postcolonial handover and the sweeping forces of urbanisation.