Spatial and Narrative Escape in Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone

Abstract

Bone is the impressive first novel written by Fae Myenne Ng, a first-generation Chinese American woman writer. Under the guidance of Gaston Bachelard’s and M. M. Bakhtin’s theories of space and Gérard Genette’s theories of narrative discourse, this paper probes into the narrative space and time in Ng’s Bone, trying to detect the protagonist’s escape consciousness revealed in the form of spatial and narrative escape. Leila’s individual escape, which derives from the family tragedy under the exploitation and expulsion of racial minorities in America, is, in fact, the epitome of every anxious Chinese American’s impulse to run away.