Dystopic Here, Utopic There: Spatial Dialectics in SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Caf?
Resource
NTU Studies in Language and Literature, 19, 061-080
Journal
NTU Studies in Language and Literature
Journal Issue
19
Pages
061-080
Date Issued
2008-06
Date
2008-06
Author(s)
Abstract
In what ways has mobility transfigured and de-homogenized Chinese Canadian
identity formation in the new millennium? This paper focuses on how racialized and
sexualized spaces are redefined by parameters of displacement in SKY Lee’s
Disappearing Moon Cafe (1990). Ethno-sexual discourses in Lee’s novel bring
alternative sexualities into dialogue in the form of a “spatial dialectics”: the
characters’ deterritorialization between China and Canada, between here and there,
between the inside and the outside, and between the private and the public. The
spatial dialectics and alternative sexualities defined by mobility and immobility hold
a dual symbolic significance of revolt against the singular nation-state and against
any fixture of locations. Lee’s novel thus puts home, homeland, homing, and
homosexuality in a permanently dialogical redefinition, and through the spatial
dialectics, the displacement becomes a rethinking of home(land) across multiple
identity formations and a renegotiation of numerous locations “out here, over there”
or “out there, over here” in new Chinese Canadian narratives.
Subjects
移置
空間辯證
另類性相
性別逾越
華裔加拿大文學
李群英
《殘月樓》
displacement
spatial dialectics
alternative sexualities
sexual transgression
Chinese Canadian Literature
SKY Lee
Disappearing Moon Caf?
Type
journal article
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