Dystopic Here, Utopic There: Spatial Dialectics in SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Caf?

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.