Diaspora literature: Unexpressed discourse and performativity in 'Dictee' and 'Mulberry and Peach: Two Women of China'

This study focuses on the construction of self and home in the Asian Diaspora literature of Theresa Hak Cha, author of DICTEE, and Hauling Nieh, author of Mulberry and Peach: Two Women of China . The study particularly engages the theory of "unexpressed discourse" and how these texts represent unexpressed discourse and the finding of voice through forms that exist beyond discourse. In DICTEE , this dissertation analyzes the condition of transcendental homelessness as "unexpressed" discourse, concluding with the construction of a textual community that serves to shelter and articulate the diasporic self. In Mulberry and Peach, the study involves the fragmentation of the migrant's mind and body, and how self-expression can occur through the body's performance of race and gender in diasporic space. In this discussion, Judith Butler's theory of gender performance is highlighted to explain how performance supersedes discourse in self-expression. In exploring "unexpressed" discourse, this dissertation delves into feminist readings of Michel Foucault and includes the theorists Mikhail Bakhtin, Jaques Lacon, Georg Lukcas, Tina Chen, Susan Bordo, James Clifford, David Leiwei Li, Stuart Hall, Homi Bhahba, Rey Chow, Caren Kaplan, Trinh T. Minh-ha and Tzevtan Tordorov.;The study also examines how home and nation are constructed through the "unexpressed" narratives of diaspora. This dissertation contends home is not bound by terrain or geography, but represents a state of mind and a movement toward continuity of self that involves a radical reconfiguration of home. Home in DICTEE is constructed through a textual community of women who represent a transnational transcendence of nation, allowing the writer build "home" through highly fragmented language. In contrast, home in Mulberry and Peach is constructed through the woman's body, with the protagonist striving to establish her body as "safe" and inviolate amid profound cultural displacement, alienation and discrimination.