LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY: SKY LEE’S DISAPPEARING MOON CAFE AND WAYSON CHOY’S THE JADE PEONY MONIQUE CLARICE ATTRUX A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO SEPTEMBER 2019 © MONIQUE ATTRUX, 2019 Abstract Many critics recognize Sky Lee’s Disappearing Moon Cafe and Wayson Choy’s The Jade Peony for breaking the silence over issues that Chinese Canadians faced in the 1990s such as racism and lack of representation. However, there has not been much discussion on Lee and Choy's exploration of language and identity. These issues are important as they continue to impact Chinese-Canadians and other diasporic communities today. The thesis explores how language in the two novels reveals that Chinese Canadians have complex and mutable identities and how notions of identity challenge the control the hegemonic powers seek to construct and restrict the Chinese identity, which in turn also restricts ideas of language. I attempt to demonstrate how these two novels resist a generic, one-dimensional view of Chinese Canadian identity and language. I conclude that Lee and Choy's novels imply that both Canadian and Chinese hegemonies influence Chinese Canadians' language and identity. ii Dedication I dedicate this thesis to my 婆婆 Poh-Poh. iii Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible were it not for my thesis supervisor, Professor Arun Mukherjee. Many of my insights captured in this thesis came to me as I sat in her class Simulating Translation during the first semester of my Master’s program. Dr. Muklherjee's forward-thinking theory and practice paved the way for my thesis, and her guidance, recommendations, and patience honed my ideas about language and literature. I am also grateful to my other committee member: Dr. Lily Cho. Dr. Cho's expertise of Asian Canadian literature and constant encouragement made this thesis possible. My special appreciation also goes to my external examiner, Dr. Allan Weiss. Dr. Weiss's criticism and expertise have been invaluable to this project. I would like to thank my parents, my partner, and my friends in the program for their understanding, support, and kindness. Last but not least, I am indebted to my maternal grandmother (婆婆 Poh-Poh) for her support and her help. When she heard about my project, the oral tales, myths, and poetry of Gold Mountain that she heard as a young girl growing up in Taishan came to her, and she told me. One story involved a Chinese sojourner exchanging letters to his wife back in China, but they both could not read and write Chinese, so they wrote symbols to each other instead. When the wife received some Canadian money, she could not understand the strange pictures on the bill, and thinking it is the same "ghost money" for ancestral worship, she burned the bills. From hearing these stories, I realized that there were so many stories at one point shared among the Chinese diaspora in Canada, but much of them are inaccessible or lost. This fact made me appreciate how important Disappearing Moon Cafe and The Jade Peony are. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract......................................................................................................................................ii Dedication.................................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgements...................................................................................................................iv Table of Contents.......................................................................................................................v Introduction: Weaving in and out of historical and present silences.........................................1 Chapter One: Names and their referents..................................................................................44 Chapter Two: Expression of “Chineseness”............................................................................92 Chapter Three: Languages and Identities...............................................................................113 Conclusion..............................................................................................................................141 Bibliography...........................................................................................................................152 v Introduction: Weaving in and out of Historical and Present Silences Towards the end of Sky Lee’s Disappearing Moon Cafe, narrator Kae reflects on her newly excavated family history of first and second-generation Chinese Canadians; she considers why their identities and histories have been cloaked in silence:1 Maybe this is a chinese-in-Canada trait, a part of the great wall of silence and invisibility we have built around us. I have a misgiving that the telling of our history is forbidden. I have violated a secret code. (Lee 214) This significant moment in the novel is indicative of the interplay among language, identity, and silence in Chinese Canadian history, literature, and criticism. What Kae names “the great wall of silence and invisibility”, she is referencing the way the hegemonic state has silenced Chinese Canadian identity, language, and history. For most of the twentieth century, Chinese Canadians were systematically excluded from Canadian society. They were prevented from entering the dominant Canadian economic and social space as they were barred from obtaining work they were qualified for and denied access to literary self-representation (Johnson 360). The hegemonic Canadian state and mainstream Canadian culture saw Chinese Canadian identities and languages as alien to the Canadian state and society. Paradoxically, the insular Chinese community in Canada also played a significant role in silencing Chinese Canadians. Traditional Chinese culture has an ethos of silence when it comes to displaying private or personal issues in the public sphere. It is deeply taboo in Chinese culture to exhibit any family or personal ugliness, especially on subjects like domestic abuse, adultery, and incest. In written Chinese, some sayings typify this ethos of privacy. The first is 家醜不可以外揚, which translates to “family ugliness should not be 1 Though Sharon Lee or SKY Lee may also be commonly seen in literary criticism, I use Sky Lee for my thesis as a respectful gesture towards Lee’s self-identification since Lee states in Jin Guo: Voices of Chinese Canadian Women, “It’s my actual name, not a pseudonym - Sharon Kwan Ying Lee - my initials” (96-97). 1 aired publicly”.2 The second is 清官難斷家務事. 3This means, “an impartial judge will find himself worthless in hearing a case of domestic disputes”. Accordingly, Kae’s “secret code” that she references is Lee drawing attention to the unspoken cultural rule shared among many Chinese Canadians that sustains silence (Lee 214).4 This Chinese cultural norm deters Chinese Canadians from speaking publicly about their private matters even if they are taking a stand against injustice because speaking out may bring shame upon the family and the community. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the “wall of silence” was the work of two hegemonies. The hegemonic Canadian state’s racist legislation such as The Chinese Immigration Act, 1885 and The Chinese Immigration Act, 1923 fortified the foundations of the “great wall of silence” (Lee 214). These legal forms of ostracization strengthened the Chinese associations; though they were measures of political and economic protection for Chinese-Canadian against the racist state, these associations became increasingly hegemonic and they were influenced by the rise of ethno-nationalism in 20th century China (Johnson 362). These laws also drove Chinese-Canadians to maintain a strict code of silence so that families could remain together with less of a risk of deportation. Wayson Choy’s The Jade Peony exemplifies the feeling of fear that spurred the collective ethos of self-exclusion and silence in the community: “one careless word - perhaps because a mo no girl or a mo no boy was showing off - and the Immigration Demons would come in the middle of the night” (Choy 228). Silence secured ethnic loyalty and ensured the survival of the group. 2 The Pinyin for 家醜不可以外揚 is Jiāchǒu bùkě yǐwài yáng, and the Jyutping is gaa1cau2bat1ho2 ji5ngoi6joeng4. 3清官難斷家務事 is qīngguān nán duàn jiāwù shì in pinyin and the jyutping is cing1gun1naan4dyun6gaa1mou6si6. 4 Lee’s “I have violated a secret code” is translated as 我違背了家法 by Wai Kam Lau (劉慧琴) in Traditional Chinese in Anthology of Chinese Canadian Writers (Lee 214; Lau 42). “Code” is 法, which means law or convention in written Chinese. 2 The silence remained even after World War II, when Chinese Canadians were recognized as legal citizens. The push for acculturation by the Canadian state and the closing of China’s borders meant that Chinese Canadians had to accept the inevitable. To acquire economic opportunities, Chinese Canadians had to adapt by learning the national language(s) of Canada and partake in normative cultural practices of Canada. Despite official citizenship, Chinese Canadians lacked substantive citizenship because during this period the Canadian state largely ignored Chinese Canadians' political and social issues, or these issues were seen as “private” matters delegated to and managed by the ethnic community. In the 1980s, it became politically necessary and possible for Chinese