Identity Negotiation of Chinese American’s Twoness in Lisa Ko’s The Leavers: Postcolonial Approach

Eka Nurcahyani,Muhammad Sulthon Kamil

doi:10.30870/jels.v6i1.9997

Abstract

As second-generation Chinese Americans living in the multiracial American society, negotiating their twoness or multicultural identities have been a crucial issue, both in day-to-day life and in postcolonial discourse. This study aims to examine the Chinese American’s twoness identity negotiation as portrayed in The Leavers written by Lisa Ko. To investigate the main character Deming Guo’s process in negotiating his twoness as Chinese American, Bhabha’s postcolonialism theory, Said’s orientalism and Dubois’ concept of twoness are deployed. The findings show that Deming’s identity negotiation was influenced by several important factors, which are family and the society he lived in i.e., the different cultures of parenting and the American community’s prejudices towards Chinese American. It is also revealed that the second-generation Chinese immigrants often mimic and imitate the dominant culture in order to be assimilated with the community. This act of imitation typically generated the feeling of ambivalence when the American culture they adopted clashes with their native Chinese values. They also suffered from racial bias and discrimination from the American community. Nevertheless, Deming ultimately succeeds in negotiating his multicultural identities and settle his twoness by hybridizes his clashing Chinese and American identities. This hybridity creates a balanced identity within him, thus solving his identity ambivalence caused by his twoness

Highlights

In postcolonial discourse, the discussion of immigrants’ identity is one of crucial issues, how these immigrants negotiate and construct their twoness or multicultural identities
Lisa Ko’ The Leavers portrays identity negotiation of Chinese American twoness by conveying the journey of Chinese American life in the Western world and how he reacted to the cultural clash in the surroundings outside and within the self
By deploying Bhabha’s mimicry, ambivalence, and hybridity concepts, Said’s orientalism and Bois’s duality concept of twoness, it is found that in the lives of Chinese immigrants today, living in a western cultural environment such as the Nurcahyani & Kamil / JELS 6 (1) (2021) 94-109 United States almost certainly means that the issue of identity ambivalence is imminent

Summary

Introduction

The discussion of immigrants’ identity is one of crucial issues, how these immigrants negotiate and construct their twoness or multicultural identities. To survive and to be accepted by the society, they have to adapt the new cultures, while at the same time preserving and maintaining their “old” culture from their homeland Oftentimes, this put them in ambivalent position as the two cultures clash with each other, creating fears, anxiety, and affect their sense of belonging, which influence the way they perceive themselves and complicate the proses of negotiating their identity. Racial discrimination plays a significant role in influencing how they negotiate their identity, since it is practiced by the society in almost every aspects of life, which forcefully positioned them in the lower rank of American society, being the subordinate of white domination This binary creates “Us” (White) and “Them or Other” (immigrant), which make them questions “Who am I?” and “Do I belong here?” Two important questions that represent the position of immigrant in the midst of American society, which need to be addressed in postcolonial discourse

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