Witnessing Trauma: Abjection and Sadomasochism in Trần Vũũ's Short Stories

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-100
Author(s):  
Christine Cao
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Sexual Deviance ◽  
Psychic Trauma ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
Trauma Informed

This article analyzes three short stories of refugee expulsion, immigrant displacement, and exilic return by contemporary writer Trần Vũũ. Beyond the binary of nostalgia and assimilation, Vietnamese diasporic identity emerges in these narratives as the tenuous subject of physical and psychic trauma. Informed by postcolonial theories of diasporic identity, Asian American scholarship on racial abjection, and psychoanalytic and feminist analyses of trauma and sexual deviance, I argue that the characters in these stories either succumb to or subvert the unwitting repetition of trauma in their attempts to challenge, if only precariously, patterns of domination through sadomasochism and counternationalist historiography.

Diasporic Characters in Rajab’s Short Stories

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 214-227
Author(s):  
Ramji Timalsina
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Senior Citizens ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Good Place ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Almost All

This article has attempted to find how the short stories in Rajab‘s collection entitled Paai [Pie] have depicted the realities in the Diaspora through the presentation of characters. Three stories have been selected from the collection. These short fictions are studied in the light of the theory of characterization in short stories. The analysis concentrates on the diasporic identity related cultural, emotional and existential conditions of the characters. The study has found that all the diasporic characters have undergone different types of problems as per their diverse life situations. Generally, all diasporans have identity crisis related to culture. This crisis is connected with their emotion and existence, too. I have also found that there are three types of main characters: general diasporas, senior citizens and young couples. The general diasporans have been used to show the existential conditions of any diasporan in the host land. The depiction of the senior citizens shows how a new land cannot be a good place for them: Most of them are emotionally shocked and unsettled. Even the young couples who reach the USA using all possible means finally feel frustrated and disoriented. Almost all the characters in these stories are unhappy diasporans. It is hoped that this article will encourage researchers to study other diasporic fictions from the point of view of characterization.

scholarly journals New Land, New Rubrics: Presenting Diasporic Experience of Asian-American Immigrants in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Selected Short Stories

sjesr ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 278-285
Author(s):  
Hassan Bin Zubair ◽  
Akifa Imtiaz ◽  
Asma Kashif Shahzad
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
Her Family ◽  
American Society ◽  
Central Characters ◽  
Asian American Immigrants

This research explored the lives and worldviews of Asian immigrants in the United States presented in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's stories in The Unknown Errors of Our Lives (2001). Central characters in Divakaruni's narratives embody the sufferings of immigrants in the New Land. Precisely it was proposed to study the stories from the perspective of the diaspora. In this collection, the researcher has selected five stories, including "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter," "The Intelligence of Wild Things," "The Blooming Season for Cacti," "The Names of Stars in Bengali," and "The Unknown Errors of Our Lives." Since the characters like Mrs. Dutta, Mira, Radhika, and Kahuku's mother emigrate from India to different zones of America, they combat issues of cultural contradiction, identity crisis, disruption and family strives. Unlike them, Tarun, Mrs. Dutta's son, and her family are assimilated into the American society, whereas the characters such as Mrs. Dutta, Didi, and Mira recurrently remember their original house and early childhood days with friends. It is because they are fragmented and frustrated in America. The study concluded that the characters in her stories are ambitious and want to live a luxurious life but because of the lack of opportunities, they could not fulfill their desires and even some of them decided to return to their homeland to get a better life.

scholarly journals Reflexive Identity Construction in South Asian American Diaspora in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake

2021 ◽  
pp. 261-281
Author(s):  
Muqarram Khorakiwala
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Business Management ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
South Asian American ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
Reflexive Modernity ◽  
Shifting Identities

Cultural identity in contemporary diasporic communities is dynamic, multifaceted, and cyclical. In the age of reflexive modernity, it is imperative to think about new ways of conceptualizing the experience of individuals straddling multiple geographies. A model of identity for such individuals should not only explain the plurality of “being” but also the fluidity of “becoming.” In this article, the question of multiple and shifting identities of the four main characters in Jhumpa Lahiri’s intergenerational novel, The Namesake, is explored using an interdisciplinary model from the field of business management based on Giddens’ theorization of reflexivity. The inward reflexive relationship between the “self” and the “other” through the discursive articulation of the ontological journey of the novel’s characters highlights the complex nature of diasporic identity construction.

Challenging the Color-Blind American Dream: Transnational Adoption in A Gesture Life, The Love Wife, and Digging to America

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 109-133
Author(s):  
Pirjo Ahokas
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Transracial Adoption ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian American Studies ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Identity Constructions ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
Color Blind

In historical terms the culture-specific notion of “the American Dream” has excluded racialized groups of people. However, the rise of postethnic and color-blind thinking in the past few decades implies that ethnic and racial equality has already been realized in the United States where people are free to choose their ethnic identities. Adoption as a literary trope is regarded as important because it allows authors to speak of broader questions about identity and belonging. This study focuses on transnational and transracial adoption in three novels: Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life (1999), Gish Jen’s The Love Wife (2004), and Ann Tyler’s Digging to America (2006). These novels link adoption to the realization of one of the updated versions of the American Dream. I call it the Color-Blind American Dream, because it is pursued through denial of racial difference. As the adopting families in the three novels differ from one another, I examine the depth of their faithfulness to notions of race transcendence—and if the novels in question ultimately challenge the Color-Blind American Dream. In a white-dominated society, Asian immigrants and adoptees of Asian descent are socialized to identify with idealized whiteness, but experiences of racism inescapably draw attention to their visible difference. At the turn of the 21st century, there was a shift in Asian American studies to transnationalism and diasporic identity constructions as well as psychoanalytic criticism. In my essay, I apply the psychoanalytic concepts of “racial melancholia” and “racial reparation,” which have been developed by Asian American scholars. Since the three novels, which all tackle transnational and transracial adoption, invest in the Color Blind- American Dream, these theoretical concepts are helpful in questioning what is being repressed in adhering to a postethnic and color-blind refusal to engage history and how this affects identity and sense of national belonging.

Disclaiming America

2021 ◽  
pp. 114-158
Author(s):  
Timothy Yu
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
American History ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Myung Mi Kim ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Korean Immigration ◽  
New Framework

Understanding the way the category of “Asian” writing circulates transnationally offers us a new framework for the study of Asian American writing that decenters the nation. In contrast to the cultural nationalist project of “claiming America,” the work of poets Myung Mi Kim and Cathy Park Hong “disclaims America,” establishing “Asian” spaces that refuse identification with the US while remaining implicated in, and critical of, American history and global power. Although Kim’s work at times thematizes Korean immigration to the US, it is equally engaged with the colonial history of Korea and with a broader critique of capitalism and militarism. Hong’s poetry inhabits a dystopian realm that resembles, but diverges from, the American landscape. Both evoke of diasporic identity that emerges from an understanding of global structures of power.

Annual review of Asian American psychology, 2012.

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 285-319
Author(s):  
Christine J. Yeh ◽  
Hyung-Chol Yoo ◽  
Ynez N. Lizarraga
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
American Psychology

Exploring the conceptualization of body image for Asian American women.

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 296-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie N. Wong ◽  
Brian TaeHyuk Keum ◽  
Daniel Caffarel ◽  
Ranjana Srinivasan ◽  
Negar Morshedian ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Body Image ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Asian American Women ◽  
American Women
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