《不像说母语者》是华裔文化批评家周蕾基于种族、语言、身份认同的研究作品。出于自身对身份认同的敏感，周蕾观察到语言带来的不平等与失语，反思不同肤色和阶级的语言与写作，认为语言实际上成为一种生命政治的秩序。
从德里达对法语的自传性反思入手，到与非洲小说家钦努阿·阿契贝同等的对语言先天论的烦恼，继而“揭开语言尚未痊愈的伤疤”，作者潜入巴金、梁秉钧、马国明、本雅明、保罗·利科等人的文本，重新思索翻译作为一种跨文化与跨语言现象所带来的失落感。本书不仅重新定义了后殖民研究中的地缘政治边界，还展示了如何将历史经验与基于声音和剧本的习惯、实践、情感、想象联系起来。

"Writing Diaspora" questions aspects of cultural politics, including the legacies of European imperialism and colonialism, the media, pedagogy, literature, literacy, sexuality, intellectual labour, the uses and abuses of theory, and popularized notions about 'others'. Essentialist notions of culture and history; conservative notions of territorial and linguistic propriety, and the 'otherness' ensuing from them; unattested claims of oppression and victimization; sexist and racist reaffirmations of sexual and racial diversities that are made in the name of moralist rectitude - all these forces create new 'solidarities' whose ideological premises remain unquestioned. "Writing Diaspora" sets up an oppositional discursive space in the midst of these new solidarities. Chow juxtaposes a range of cultural contradictions in order to rethink the currently dominant conceptualizations of the solidarities themselves.

Although the era of European colonialism has long passed, misgivings about the inequality of the encounters between European and non-European languages persist in many parts of the postcolonial world. This unfinished state of affairs, this lingering historical experience of being caught among unequal languages, is the subject of Rey Chow's book. A diverse group of personae, never before assembled in a similar manner, make their appearances in the various chapters: the young mulatto happening upon a photograph about skin color in a popular magazine; the man from Martinique hearing himself named "Negro" in public in France; call center agents in India trained to Americanize their accents while speaking with customers; the Algerian Jewish philosopher reflecting on his relation to the French language; African intellectuals debating the pros and cons of using English for purposes of creative writing; the translator acting by turns as a traitor and as a mourner in the course of cross-cultural exchange; Cantonese-speaking writers of Chinese contemplating the politics of food consumption; radio drama workers straddling the forms of traditional storytelling and mediatized sound broadcast.
In these riveting scenes of speaking and writing imbricated with race, pigmentation, and class demarcations, Chow suggests, postcolonial languaging becomes, de facto, an order of biopolitics. The native speaker, the fulcrum figure often accorded a transcendent status, is realigned here as the repository of illusory linguistic origins and unities. By inserting British and post-British Hong Kong (the city where she grew up) into the languaging controversies that tend to be pursued in Francophone (and occasionally Anglophone) deliberations, and by sketching the fraught situations faced by those coping with the specifics of using Chinese while negotiating with English, Chow not only redefines the geopolitical boundaries of postcolonial inquiry but also demonstrates how such inquiry must articulate historical experience to the habits, practices, affects, and imaginaries based in sounds and scripts.

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在本书中，周蕾考察了令世界各地观众称羡的中国当代电影。她认为，中国电影属于某种从书写文字到技术化视觉意像的符号系统转型史，这一转型伴随着现代性历史，但却总是被压抑了。
在具体分析吴天明、陈凯歌和张艺谋的《老井》、《黄土地》、《孩子王》、《红高粱》以及《大红灯笼高高挂》等影片前，作者以视觉性为切入点，清晰而令人信服地重新解读了二十世纪中国的主要事件。
当代中国导演们究竟是如何对待诸如社群、国族、工作、爱恋、学习、革命、自然以及性别等问题的？更重要的是，他们是如何对待电影制作经验本身的商品化这一问题？这些导演们的作品组成了周蕾所称的「新民族志」，它填补了本土与大都会市场之间的沟壑。
本书除了提供给读者以从未尝试过的对当代中国影片的分析之外，还对当代某些最紧迫争论的响应，这些争论包括跨文化研究、性别关系、民族性、身分认同、真确性以及商品拜物主义等。
理论性地徜徉在文学与视觉呈述之间、精英与大众文化之间以及第一和第三世界之间，作者勾划、批判了目前文化政治中各种流行的阐释类型根深蒂固的偏见和歧视，以及它们的实际用途。
最后，周蕾通过对华特·本雅明的论文《翻译者的任务》(The Task of the Translator)的特别解读，认为中国当代电影乃是后殖民世界文化翻译这一普遍议题内的某一事件。
《原初的激情》不仅是对中国文化和文化间「翻译」的及时民族志探索，也是对当代电影作了一番批判性考察，超越了任何单一学科的界限。作者将电影、文学、后殖民史、文化研究、女性研究以及民族志中的问题编织在一起，提供给读者跨学科的视野。本书不仅吸引对当代电影的理论问题感兴趣的人，而且能引起任何试图理解中国文化之复杂性的人的兴趣。

本書收集作者論及香港文化的五篇論文， 如作者在新寫的「代序：不懂中文」中所說的，這幾篇關於香港文化的文章，每篇內容雖然不同，但寫作的意圖都是藉著一些涉及香港的文化現象，去討論一些不止於香港的理論性問題。意旨並非是用論及的例子去代表或概括香港文化，而是希望為香港文化作出較公道的分析，在辨別出香港文化的獨特的價值之餘，同時引導出香港文化的世界性。