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Narrating a Diasporic Identity: Language, Migrancy, and Ethnicity in Shirley Geok-lin Lim's Monsoon History

Abstract
This thesis sets out to explore Shirley Geok-lin Lim's poetry collection Monsoon History in terms of three aspects: language, migrancy, and ethnicity. It also attempts to examine Shirley Lim's diasporic identity by embracing the border thinking. The notion of border-crossing, either physically or psychologically, passes through each chapter to represent the poet's identity and to re-create a space for herself to articulate. It is a study of Lim's exile experiences and how she establishes the poetics of diaspora for Asian American literature. In the introduction, the concept of diaspora and the theoretical framework will be explicated. The first chapter probes into the relationship between Shirley Lim and her choice of language in writing. I adopt Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's analysis of language and definition of ¡§minor literature¡¨ to discuss the deterritorialization of Lim's writing. The second chapter traces Lim's migrant status, in which I resort to Edward Said's ¡§Reflections on Exile¡¨ and his different categorizations of exile. The third chapter, appealing to several theorists or critics, such as Benedict Anderson, Ernest Gellner, and Ling-chi Wang, deals with Lim's problem of ethnic identity displayed in her poetry. The last chapter concludes with an overall argumentation that the destination and dissolution of Lim's identity is an Asian American because of reterritorialization of language, migrancy, and ethnicity.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0706104-155019
Date06 July 2004
CreatorsLi, Yi-feng
ContributorsTee Kim Tong, Shu-Chen Chiang, Hsinya Huang
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0706104-155019
Rightsnot_available, Copyright information available at source archive

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