They are what they speak: translating language uses into ethnic and gender identities in contemporary Chinese American fiction
Publication Date
July 28, 2026
Creator
Liu, Kehan
Abstract
This dissertation examines how uses of Chinese—principally Chinese Pidgin English and code-switching—manifest as ethnic and gender identities in three Chinese American novels: Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989), Weike Wang’s Joan Is Okay (2022), and Kathryn Ma’s The Chinese Groove (2023). It has become common in Chinese American writing to weave Chinese into Anglophone texts; however, with both the materials and the modes of incorporation continuing to evolve, the significance such bilingual practice simultaneously embeds changes. I argue that the specific Chinese expressions each author chooses, together with their writing strategies, signify a changing zeitgeist of Chinese Americanness, which I analyse along the axes of ethnic and gender identity. I particularly focus on how authorial realities impact the authors’ uses of Chinese and how these personal conditions constitute contemporary forms of Chinese Americanness. The first chapter takes its cues from Rey Chow’s terms “going native”, “the melancholy turn”, and “coercive mimeticism”, examining the use of Chinese as an ethnic symbol. I argue against viewing Tan’s employment of Chinese as a signifier of cultural authenticity and against reading her use vis-à-vis cultural authenticity. Instead, I argue that her Chinese usage articulates strong personal experiences and emotions. I then establish Tan’s writing as a historical and reception-based paradigm to compare Wang’s and Ma’s novels, pinpointing how their uses of Chinese differ and how these differences inscribe distinctive forms of Chinese Americanness. Chapter Two is modelled on Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, aiming to unveil the interpellative quality of both languages. I pay more attention to how the three female authors write back to the interpellative gender politics, especially how they utilise silence as a strategy to claim their characters’ as well as their own identities. This dissertation interprets the evolution of Chinese Americanness in Chinese American literary production by attending to writerly uses of Chinese and bilingualism. Linguistic identities manifest as ethnic and gender identities, and this is a dynamic process. At its core, this dissertation argues for Chinese Americanness as manifested through diverse language uses and posits its vibrant development, as will be evident in future Chinese American literature.
Item Type
ethesis
Thesis Type
MRes
Supervisors
Maxey, Ruth
Billingham, Susan
Associated Schools / Departments
UoN Repository URI
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They Are What They Speak- Translating Language Uses into Ethnic and Gender Identities in Contemporary Chinese American Fiction.pdf
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