On the Identity in the “Unhomely”: Take Home and Daughter of the River as an Example

Abstract

The African American writer Toni Morrison and the British Chinese writer Hong Ying are both diasporic writers. Home and Daughter of the River are their representative works respectively, and their special ethnic identities give these two novels the unique marginalized style and the latent confusion of multiple identities. Based on the Freudian psychoanalytic theory of the “unhomely”, the paper focuses on the three-dimensional identity connotation and searching that are inherently related in the novels from the perspective of identity. By interpreting the characters in the “uncanny” state on identity issues, deciphering the contradictory relationship between the “unhomely” elements and identity construction is “attractive” and “repulsive”, aiming to provide a new path and perspective for identity studies in China and abroad.