Diasporic Identity From A Postcolonial Feminist Perspective

Novels by migrant women writers in a postcolonial context are an important part of contemporary British literature. The key topic in these novels is diasporic identity in a cross-cultural context. Since the1980s significant progress has been made in migrant women writing and a number of masterpieces are published in succession, among which Joan Riley’s The Unbelonging, Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, Andrea Levy’s Small Island, and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth are the most representative and influential ones. Through describing the survival experiences of post-war British immigrants and their offspring, these individualized narratives of highly artistic value address issues of race relations and cultural identity against a multicultural background. However, at present the attention to and research of British novels by migrant women writers are far from enough, and there is no systematic and comparative study of the four novels yet.This dissertation endeavors to explore female diasporic identity from a postcolonial feminist perspective. Based on theories concerning diasporic identity and postcolonial feminist criticism, it does a close reading of the four novels with a focus on the construction of women’s diasporic identity through a comparative study of their similarities and differences. In this process, this dissertation makes a detailed and in-depth analysis of such factors as race, gender, class, language, age, generational differences, ethnic group and religion, and argues how these factors, interacting with and influencing each other in time and space, construct a diasporic identity with heterogeneity, hybridity, and fluidity as its core characteristics. Based on a comparison of the similarities and differences of diasporic identity construction as represented in the four novels, this dissertation summarizes the major structural pattern by which the multiple factors play their roles and influence each other-a pattern in which race and gender function as the core variables, and other factors (like class, ethnicity, language, religion, age, generational differences, etc.) as supplementary variables. Within this framework, the above-mentioned factors do not play a role in isolation, but rather interact with each other in various ways and jointly construct the diasporic identity of migrant women characters. At the same time, due to the differences among individual migrant women, the combination and interaction of various factors also present significant differences.This dissertation combines postcolonial feminist criticism with theories on diasporic identity, and through a close reading of the four contemporary British novels by migrant women writers, it conducts a systematic study of the multiple variables affecting diasporic identity at the micro level. Its research method and conclusion constitute a complement to and promotion of the existing theories on diasporic identity, and at the same time offer some insights into the study of other contemporary British novels by migrant women writers. In addition, to do a research like this in the context of globalization can help us achieve a better understanding of the immigrant problem in postwar Britain as well as the difficulties it encounters in the process of building a multicultural society; meanwhile, it helps us reflect on ourselves and learn to respect cultural differences so as to raise our cross-cultural awareness in international communication.This dissertation mainly consists of five chapters. Chapter One "Literature Review" summarizes the research status of the four contemporary British novels by migrant women writers at home and abroad, explains the concepts of "diaspora" and "diasporic identity", and provides an overview of literary and cultural theories related to diasporic identity and postcolonial feminism. The following four chapters (Chapter Two to Chapter Five) analyze the diasporic identity construction of the female protagonists in The Unbelonging, Brick Lane, Small Island, and White Teeth respectively, highlighting the different factors and roles they play in the process.