Bridging Representations of North American Chinese Diaspora with Homi Bhabha

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how Wayson Choy and Laurence Yep deploy discursive strategies for increasing Chinese North Americans’ visibility in North America. So far, there has been a tremendous amount of published research on their works, but very few scholars have considered their representations of North American Chinese diaspora through the lens of postcolonial theory. In response to this insufficiency, my dissertation examines their Chinese diasporic writings with Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial theory and addresses the inseparable link between postcolonial studies and Chinese North American literature. The dissertation argues that the liminal moment of cultural signification—“neither Chinese nor American/Canadian”— foregrounded in the works by Choy and Yep destabilizes the power of North American cultural hegemony and rearticulates the unsettling difference in the narration of the nations of Canada and the United States. This argument is developed in the course of four chapters: Chapter one theorizes postcolonial Chinese North American literature and argues that postcolonial theory offers a productive approach to the issues of transnationality and globalization represented in Chinese North American literature. Chapter two conducts a radical reading of Chinatown as “the third space” in Choy’s Paper Shadows and Yep’s The Lost Garden. The chapter argues that the memoirs of Yep and Choy reconfigure the image of Chinatown and reconstruct Chinese North American history through their childhood memories. Chapter three studies Jook-Liang’s Hollywood fantasies in Choy’s The Jade Peony and argues that her mimicry constitutes a double disarticulation of both Chinese and Canadian cultures and reverses the ideological and sexual gaze by Western male audience. Chapter four investigates how Yep’s discursive strategies in The Traitor disrupt the normalization of the English language. The chapter argues that Yep consciously mistranslates both the Chinese and English languages to reconstruct the history of Rock Springs Massacre in Wyoming. The dissertation concludes with the assertion that the writings by Choy and Yep represent the hidden or repressed voices of Chinese North Americans whose contributions to the development of North America must be properly recognized.