Character-Scape in Wang Ping's The magic whip : scraping the shape of Chinese characters to revisit their scope

Abstract

In The Magic Whip, her last collection of poems (published in 2003), Wang Ping explores the notion of identity. She illustrates its diversity and complexity through the examples of individuals who, like her, lef their native land and who, once in a new socially and culturally disconcerting environ¬ ment, are confronted with a new language. It appears throughout the poems that this experience triggers the need to question one's origins and culture, especially by reverting to one’s mother tongue, and in Wang’s case, to the Chinese language. Wang writes her poems in English, her language of adoption, but from time to time some Chinese characters rise up from the surface of her texts. These graphic and linguistic inclusions are not merely ornamental motif but the poetic source of the texts.