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Resisting Diaspora and Transnational Definitions in Monique Truong's the Book of Salt, Peter Bacho's Cebu, and Other Fiction

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Resisting Diaspora and Transnational Definitions in Monique Truong's the Book of Salt, Peter Bacho's Cebu, and Other Fiction Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English Spring 5-5-2012 Resisting Diaspora and Transnational Definitions in Monique Truong's the Book of Salt, Peter Bacho's Cebu, and Other Fiction Debora Stefani Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Stefani, Debora, "Resisting Diaspora and Transnational Definitions in Monique ruong'T s the Book of Salt, Peter Bacho's Cebu, and Other Fiction." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2012. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/81 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RESISTING DIASPORA AND TRANSNATIONAL DEFINITIONS IN MONIQUE TRUONG’S THE BOOK OF SALT, PETER BACHO’S CEBU, AND OTHER FICTION by DEBORA STEFANI Under the Direction of Ian Almond and Pearl McHaney ABSTRACT Even if their presence is only temporary, diasporic individuals are bound to disrupt the existing order of the pre-structured communities they enter. Plenty of scholars have written on how identity is constructed; I investigate the power relations that form when components such as ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, class, and language intersect in diasporic and transnational movements. How does sexuality operate on ethnicity so as to cause an existential crisis? How does religion function both to reinforce and to hide one’s ethnic identity? Diasporic subjects participate in the resignification of their identity not only because they encounter (semi)-alien, socio-economic and cultural environments but also because components of their identity mentioned above realign along different trajectories, and this realignment undoubtedly affects the way they interact in the new environment. To explore this territory, I analyze Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt, Peter Bacho’s Cebu, Linh Dinh’s “Prisoner with a Dictionary” and “‘!’,” and Gish Jen’s Mona in the Promised Land. INDEX WORDS: American literature, Asian American literature, Diasporic literature, Identity, Language, Sexuality, Religion, Multiethnic, Postcolonial, Postmodern, Monique Truong, The Book of Salt, Peter Bacho, Cebu, Linh Dinh, “Prisoner with a Dictionary,” “‘!’,” Gish Jen, Mona in the Promised Land RESISTING DIASPORA AND TRANSNATIONAL DEFINITIONS IN MONIQUE TRUONG’S THE BOOK OF SALT, PETER BACHO’S CEBU, AND OTHER FICTION by DEBORA STEFANI A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2012 Copyright by Debora Stefani 2012 RESISTING DIASPORA AND TRANSNATIONAL DEFINITIONS IN MONIQUE TRUONG’S THE BOOK OF SALT, PETER BACHO’S CEBU, AND OTHER FICTION by DEBORA STEFANI Committee Chair: Ian Almond Pearl McHaney Committee: Renée Schatteman Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2012 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank first and for most my family for their love and support, both moral and financial. Even though it was hard for them to accept that I don’t want to live in Italy, they have always encouraged me to pursue my dreams. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 1 A NEW APPROACH TO DIASPORIC STUDIES AND ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE ............................................................................................................ 31 1.1 Transnationalism and Diaspora Reconsidered ..................................................... 32 1.2 A New Approach ................................................................................................. 38 1.3 Asian American Literature and Diasporic Studies Side by Side……..………….. 44 1.4 A New Approach to Analyze Asian American Literature……………….............. 47 1.5 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..... 53 2 IS IT AN ETHNIC OR A SEXUAL CRISIS? ................................................. 55 2.1 Convergence of Postcolonial, Neocolonial, and Diasporic in Ben Lucero……. 56 2.1.1 “America, Please Forgive Me; I had Sex with a Filipina” ................................ 62 2.2. Diaspora versus Exile in The Book of Salt………..….………………………..…..... 69 2.2.1 The Burden of Queering the Empire………………………………………………... 70 2.2.2 Self-inflicted Violence: a Way to Counteract the Empire……………………..…. 73 2.2.3 Ethnicity at the Service of Sexuality; Sexuality at the Service of Ethnicity…..... 76 2.2.4 Where is home? Ethnicity and Sexuality Answer………………………………..... 79 2.2.5 Defying the Ideology of Nationalism………………………………………………... 83 2.3 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….... 86 3 NO AMERICANNESS GRANTED: THE CONFLICTUAL INTERSECTION BETWEEN ETHNICITY AND RELIGION…………………………………………..…89 3.1 A Look at Crucifixions: Anthropological Explanations……………………….….. 89 vi 3.1.1 Ben’s Reaction to Carlito’s Crucifixion…………………………………………….. 95 3.1.2 The Complex Interplay of Religion and Ethnicity: Religious or Ethnical Surrender?......................................................................................................... 100 3.1.3 The Defeat of the Hybrid.................................................................................... 107 3.2 Gish Jen’s Mona in the Promised Land: A Celebration of Hybridity and a Move towards a Postethnic America?......................................................................... 111 3.2.1 Is Ethnical Authenticity Still Possible in a Postmodern World?....................... 114 3.2.2 Mona’s Conversion to Judaism: a Question of Wholeness or a Struggle with Racial Essentialism and Family Expectations?................................................. 117 3.2.3 A Battle Lost: No Americanness Granted…………………………………………. 122 3.3 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..…. 124 4 DISEMPOWERING RESISTANCE….….…………………...……………...….… 128 4.1 The Subaltern Can Only Murmur……………………………………………..…….. 127 4.2 A Fake Attempt to Resist Colonization……………………………………....…..…134 4.3 Conclusion……………………………………………………...………….…….140 CONCLUSION…………………..………………………………………………….….142 NOTES…………. ............................................................................................................ 147 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 149 WORKS CONSULTED…………………………………………..……………………167 1 INTRODUCTION In the introduction to Theorizing Diaspora, Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur exhort scholars “to move beyond theorizing how diasporic identities are constructed and consolidated and ask, how are these diasporic identities practiced, lived, and experienced?” (9). In their transnational journey, diasporic subjects encounter different (and similar) socio-political, economic, and cultural environments. They enter pre-structured communities that behave according to rules and regulations negotiated throughout decades, centuries, millennia. How do they participate in the socio-political life of the host country? What economic factors determine their new place in the workforce? What aspects of the new culture will they accept and re- elaborate? Which ones will they struggle with or abruptly refuse? Even if their presence is only temporary, diasporic individuals are bound to disrupt the existent order. This disruption affects newcomers as well as natives; it forces the latter to reassess and bargain new subject positions for themselves. As scholars have been writing abundantly on the effects of immigration and diaspora on the natives, I concentrate on the ways diasporic subjects ascribe new meanings to their identities. What power relations form in the course of this process? “All diasporic journeys are composite […]. They are embarked upon, lived, and re-lived through multiple modalities: modalities, for example, of gender, race, class, religion, language and generation” (Brah 184). Diasporic subjects participate in the resignification of their identity not only because they encounter (semi)-alien, socio-economical and cultural environments but also because components of their identity such as sexuality, religion, gender, language, and economic status realign along different trajectories, and this realignment undoubtedly affects the way they interact in the new environment. 2 Influential for the writing of my dissertation is Lisa Lowe’s discussion of how the transnational movement of capital has modified the construction of gender. Lisa Lowe states For in the complex encounters between transnational capital and women within patriarchal gender structures, the very processes that produce a racialized feminized proletariat both displace traditional and national patriarchies and their defining regulations of gender, space, and work and racialize the women in relation to other racialized groups. These displacements produce new possibilities precisely because they have led to a breakdown and a reformulation of the categories of nation, race, class, and gender. (Immigrant 161-62) Lowe illustrates above a possible scenario resulting from the clash between transnationalism and women oppressed by patriarchy. How is
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