Mixed Race Asian Subjectivities and Genres of the Self
Date
2019-04-29
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Abstract
Through the work of life writing, this thesis examines representations of mixed race Asian subjectivity. Although the idea of “race” is a social construct with no biological essence, race continues to be enacted through racism and racialization, making it “real” through embodied experiences and systemic inequalities. Through my exploration of genres such as memoir, biotext and documentary, this thesis sheds light on the disruptive potentials of multiracial discourse when it comes to ideas of race, identity and nation. The mixed race subjects depicted in these texts create ruptures in these settled categories of belonging by transgressing their boundaries and in doing so, pointing out their constructedness. However, in other moments, these constructs remain intact, holding the mixed race subject inside a particular category that may not align with her or his self-identity. In All Our Father’s Relations, for example, the Musqueam-Chinese Grant siblings are forced out of the racial category of “Indigenous” and into that of “Chinese” due to the gendered, patriarchal language of the Indian Act. Differently, for Diamond Grill’s narrator, he is able to let moments of racial misrecognition “ride” by choosing to slip beneath normative configurations of race and nation while he attempts to understand his racialized experiences. Finally, in Hapa Girl: A Memoir, May-lee and Jeff Chai slip in and out of particular racial and cultural spaces as they internalize the labelling of their bodies. Ultimately, these racialized experiences inform how the mixed race subject sees and produces her or his “self” through the work of life writing.
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Critical Mixed Race Studies, Settler Colonialism, Postcolonialism, Anti-Racism, Feminism, Nationalism, Identity, Life Writing
Citation
Mah-Vierling, J. A. (2019). Mixed Race Asian Subjectivities and Genres of the Self (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.