Discipline And Resistance:The Decolonial Writing In Little Fires Everywhere

Discipline and resistance are frequently mentioned themes in diasporic English literature,which reappear how diasporic people deconstruct colonial discourse and struggle for rationale of existence in mainstream society.In the 21^st century,diasporic literature reveals obvious universal turn which inspires Chinese American writers to seek for strategies of decolonization in multicultural context.Celeste Ng’s latest works Little Fires Everywhere,published in 2017,no longer limits itself in the theme relating to Chinese immigrants and their descendants,but shapes a marginal character who obtains strong perseverance and concentrates on humanistic and universal concerns.Based on her traveling living experience,crossing borders in conventional communities,the cultural dialogue with power discourse and mobile home,heroine Mia Warren,this novel reflects a cosmopolitan decolonial idea.This thesis initially points out the metaphorical relationship between marginal characters and Chinese Americans,visualizing Mia’s struggle experience that could be referred by Chinese Americans so as to analyze the author’s decolonial ideas from three dimensions.The representative of marginal individual Mia could be considered as the reappearance of the author’s subjectivity,Mia’s traveling writing also symbolizes the immigration history of Chinese Americans.Meanwhile,Mia’s resistance suitably responds to the dilemma suffered by the Chinese American hero in Everything I Never Told You.The common mission of Mia and ethnic people could be revealed based on the connection so as to discover the decolonization in her resistance.This thesis chooses power discourse as the theoretical source of the theme,specifically analyzes how to resist to and deconstructs the cultural borders,discourse monologue and liminial space in American society in the light of post-colonial key words“transgression”“dialogue”and“cosmopolitanism”.As a marginal individual,Mia resists to the discipline and insists on her own value in the conventional community,which challenges the doctrines established by mainstream and reflects an obvious sense of transgression.As for dialogue,Mia’s brave demonstration confronting with discipline represents the decolonization and intercultural effect revealed in dialogue.At last,in the light of spatial theory,this thesis discovers that Shaker Heights symbolizes a binary space classified and limited by colonial doctrines which not only restricts the free development of ethnic group,but also causes the spiritual crisis like uncanny emotion or dislocation.Mia’s traveling writing reveals the mobility of space and weakens the fixed connection between subject and a certain geographical location,which could deconstruct the homeland defined by cultural imperialism,and give expression to cosmopolitan homeland.The concept of cosmopolitanism characterized by mobility provides an solution of breaking through liminal space for those who are still suffering from the sorrow of homelessness in host land.Through reappearing the transgression of oppressive borders,the dialogue that resists to discourse governance and the cosmopolitan homeland characterized by mobility,Ng forwards a shared destiny for both marginal people and ethnic group.She criticizes the negativity of border,discourse governance and liminal space,provides a new decolonial idea which no longer emphasizes the ethnicity but deconstructs cultural dualism relying on mobility and diversity,thus pursuing cultural symbiosis in the context of multiculturalism.These decolonial ideas not only help ethnic group to escape from identity crisis,aphasia and uncanny emotion,but indicate humanistic concerns to marginal people who are also oppressed by cultural imperialism,which widen the scope of its literary criticism.