The Cultural Identity And Living Predicament Of Chinese-Australians In Brian Castro's Brids Of Passage

Birds of Passage, the first novel by Australian contemporary writer Brian Castro, tells the story of a Chinese immigrant of older generation, Lo Yun Shan, who comes to Australia to seek his fortune on the goldfields; and juxtaposed with his story, the experiences of Seamus O'Young, Shan's descendant, also unfold before readers. Two main threads of the storytelling parallel to each other: past and present, history and reality, and time and space are melted together so that readers are confused in the labyrinthine narration. Brian Castro breaks the traditional way of writing, and adopts the post-modernist methods of parallelling and doubling to present the cultural diaspora and psychological dislocation that Chinese-Australians have been or are experiencing. The thesis makes a detailed analysis of the novel and probes into the issue of cultural identity and living predicament of Chinese-Australians.The thesis consists of five parts with the first chapter providing a general introduction of literature review, objectives and methodology of this study. In the second chapter, the theoretical framework is formed through detailed elaboration on the notion of cultural identity, together with its theoretical developments. Based on the theoretical framework, the third chapter inquires into the omniscient issue of cultural identity in the novel in five aspects: author and cultural identity, homeland and cultural identity, name and cultural identity, image and cultural identity, and language and cultural identity. In Chapter Four, the living predicament of Chinese-Australians is presented by making research into the artistic characteristic of doubling in Birds of Passage. And Chapter Five comes to the conclusion, which sums up the whole thesis and looks into the future.