The Fluid Identity: Chinese Americans’ Way To Survive In Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone

Identity has been a focus in post-colonial studies. Generations of marginalized andalienated Chinese Americans, under the shadow of American imperial hegemony anddiscrimination, never cease adapting themselves to new identities to win their survivalin adopted land espacially when confronted with feminist, anti-colonial and anti-racistmovements, which is reflected in Chinese American literature as Fae Myenne Ng’sdebut Bone. There have been a lot of academic studies pursuing identity in China andoverseas. Previous studies of Chinese Americans’ identity confine to identity seeking,yet ignore that identity itself is of a fluid nature. Cultural theorist Stuart Hall orientatesfluid identiy as a post-colonial subject, pointing out that oneness, otherness, anddoubleness of identity are natural steps of post-colonial identification.Using Stuart Hall’s conception of fluid identity as the theoratical foundation, andBone as text, this thesis intends to explore Fae Myenne Ng’ effort in deconstructing,constructing and reconstructing Chinese Americans ethnic and sexual identities basedon different social, historical and political backgrounds, which well illustratespost-colonial identity is not in a static state, but in a dynamic state with constantchanging transformations. The main body of this thesis is divided into three chapters.Chapter one, based on Hall’s oneness of identity in common sense, analyzes cooliegeneration Chinese Americans’ ethnic and sexual identitication in Bone, or thepreservation of their sinicized identification. Chapter two, by adapting Hall’s othernessof identity as basis, focuses on Chinese Americans’ assimilated and Americanized ethnicand sexual identification different from sinicized identification under the Civil RightsMovement and Feminist Movement. Chapter three illustrates Chinese Americans’doubleness of identity under globalization, which is charactered with identificationhybridity, or a combination of both Chinese identity and American identity, thusdrawing the conclusion that Chinese Americans has applied the fluidity of identification as a way to survive. The thesis aims to convey that oneness, otherness and doublenessof identity are the due process of post-colonial identification. Subject to the logic ofvolatility, multifaceted post-colonial identities are with transformations and are neverfully and finally constructed,...