Abstract
This paper examines the connections between love relationships and self-identity development of two selected heroines belonging to two different minority groups in America -- the Indian and the Chinese. For this purpose, two chick lit novels, Tanuja Desai Hidier’s Born Confused (2002) and Kim Wong Keltner’s The Dim Sum of All Things (2004) are selected. By employing a conceptualised framework, influenced by Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems of development and Berry’s model of acculturation, the present paper focuses on the ethnic community and the American society in which the individuals are set. Comparing the love relationships as represented within both novels indicates how the connections and interactions between the selected heroines’ and their self-identity development influence the ways they acculturate with the mainstream culture as well as retain their own ethnicity. Although the theme of love has always dominated the chick lit genre, the present paper aims to fuse the notion of romance with culture and diaspora. This investigation shows how the selected theme is significant in the identity development process of the female protagonists. Therefore, this paper explicates the different aspects of a love relationship with regards to the heroines’ interactions with the ethnic community and the American society. The findings show different cultural orientations between choosing a love target who belongs to the same minority group of the selected heroine and that of the mainstream Caucasian society. Furthermore, the findings indicate the influential role of a love relationship on identity development as represented within the selected novels. DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/gema-2016-1602-10
Highlights
The representation of love and romance is one of the central themes of mainstream chick lit
Depending on the context in which the love relationships are set or the cultural/social setting(s) which the love targets belong to, the theme of love and romantic life of the heroines could differ in terms of the interactional effect on their identity development and cultural recognition
Love relationship could be relevant to the way the ethnic heroines encounter both the mainstream and the minority culture as well as aspects of appearance and deep culture of the host country
Summary
The representation of love and romance is one of the central themes of mainstream chick lit. Similar to any other human relationship, romantic interactions of the individual with her potential love target could be effective in creating a well-developed selfidentity These influences become complicated when cultural and ethnic differences emerge. According to Uri Bronfenbrenner (1979; 1995; 2005), the individual’s psychosocial identity development significantly depends on the interactions between the self and ISSN: 1675-8021 environment that occurs in five different “nested” levels that are micro-, meso-, exo-, macroand chronosystems. According to this theory, different layers of identity development that are identified for the self are bidirectional and interactional. Love relationship could be relevant to the way the ethnic heroines encounter both the mainstream and the minority culture as well as aspects of appearance and deep culture of the host country
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