Literary Fantasy in Contemporary Chinese Diasporic Women's Literature

Imagining Home

Fang Tang

This book explores the use of literary fantasy in the construction of identity and ‘home’ in contemporary diasporic Chinese women’s literature. It argues that the use of fantasy acts as a way of undermining the power of patriarchy and unsettling fixed notions of home. The idea of home explored in this book relates to complicated struggles to gain a sense of belonging, as experienced by marginalized subjects in constructing their diasporic identities — which can best be understood as unstable, shifting, and shaped by historical conditions and power relations.

Fantasy is seen to operate in the corpus of this book as a literary mode, as defined by Rosemary Jackson. Literary fantasy offers a way to rework ancient myths, fairy tales, ghost stories and legends; it also subverts conventional narratives and challenges the power of patriarchy and other dominant ideologies. Through a critical reading of four diasporic Chinese women authors, namely, Maxine Hong Kingston, Adeline Yen Mah, Ying Chen and Larissa Lai, this book aims to offer critical insights into how their works re-imagine a ‘home’ through literary fantasy which leads beyond nationalist and Orientalist stereotypes; and how essentialist conceptions of diasporic culture are challenged by global geopolitics and cultural interactions.

Lexington Books

Pages: 204 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-4985-9546-9 • Hardback • December 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

978-1-4985-9547-6 • eBook • December 2019 • $105.50 • (£82.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Asian / Chinese

Literary Fantasy in Contemporary Chinese Diasporic Women's Literature

Imagining Home

Hardback

eBook

Summary

This book explores the use of literary fantasy in the construction of identity and ‘home’ in contemporary diasporic Chinese women’s literature. It argues that the use of fantasy acts as a way of undermining the power of patriarchy and unsettling fixed notions of home. The idea of home explored in this book relates to complicated struggles to gain a sense of belonging, as experienced by marginalized subjects in constructing their diasporic identities — which can best be understood as unstable, shifting, and shaped by historical conditions and power relations.

Fantasy is seen to operate in the corpus of this book as a literary mode, as defined by Rosemary Jackson. Literary fantasy offers a way to rework ancient myths, fairy tales, ghost stories and legends; it also subverts conventional narratives and challenges the power of patriarchy and other dominant ideologies. Through a critical reading of four diasporic Chinese women authors, namely, Maxine Hong Kingston, Adeline Yen Mah, Ying Chen and Larissa Lai, this book aims to offer critical insights into how their works re-imagine a ‘home’ through literary fantasy which leads beyond nationalist and Orientalist stereotypes; and how essentialist conceptions of diasporic culture are challenged by global geopolitics and cultural interactions.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 204 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-4985-9546-9 • Hardback • December 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

978-1-4985-9547-6 • eBook • December 2019 • $105.50 • (£82.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Asian / Chinese

Author

Fang Tang is associate professor in the department of literature and art at Yangtze University.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: The Articulation of Silences: Empowering Ghosts and Rewriting Myths in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior

Chapter Two: Homing Desire and the Use of Cinderella Tales in Adeline Yen Mah’s Falling Leaves Return to Their Roots

Chapter Three: Fantasizing the Mother-Daughter Relationship, Cannibalism and Posthumous Narratives in Ying Chen’s Ingratitude

Chapter Four: Crossing Boundaries: the Reconstruction of Queering History and Folktales in Larissa Lai’s When Fox is a Thousand

Conclusion

Literary Fantasy in Contemporary Chinese Diasporic Women's Literature

Imagining Home

Fang Tang

Literary Fantasy in Contemporary Chinese Diasporic Women's Literature

Imagining Home

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