Translocating Identity in Sino-Indian Diasporic Literature: Kwai-Yun Li’s <i>The Last Dragon Dance<i>

Authors

  • Nishi Pulugurtha, Brahmananda Keshab Chandra College, Kolkata, India

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31436/asiatic.v6i1.236

Abstract

The Last Dragon Dance and Other Stories (2008) by Kwai-Yun Li is a collection of short stories that trace a triangular trajectory of geographical movement from origin in China, birth and growing up in India and then emigration to America. Kwai-Yun Li is a diasporic writer who just does not move from one country to another but also inhabits an intermediary home at some point of time in her life. This paper examines the themes of the twice-migrant Sino-South Asian diaspora and focuses on where we can situate writing that is Chinese in ethnicity, Indian in upbringing and North American in location. The stories in the collection are set among the Chinese community in Calcutta in the 1950s and 60s. In locating the stories in Calcutta, Kwai-Yun seems to displace the importance of the West and of the home country, a displacement it achieves by describing the tension, richness and complexity of Chinese life in India.

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Author Biography

Nishi Pulugurtha, Brahmananda Keshab Chandra College, Kolkata, India

Dr. Nishi Pulugurtha is Head and Assistant Professor in English, Brahmananda Keshab Chandra College, Kolkata. She was a UGC Research Fellow, University of Calcutta and earned her Ph.D. on Coleridge’s poetry. Her postdoctoral work dealt with poetry written in English in Bengal in the nineteenth century. She is now working on diasporic literature and has been awarded an Associateship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. She has also completed a project on diaspora poetry, and has published a monograph on Derozio.

 

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Published

2012-06-15

How to Cite

Pulugurtha, Brahmananda Keshab Chandra College, Kolkata, India, N. (2012). Translocating Identity in Sino-Indian Diasporic Literature: Kwai-Yun Li’s &lt;i&gt;The Last Dragon Dance&lt;i&gt;. Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature, 6(1), 63–72. https://doi.org/10.31436/asiatic.v6i1.236

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 1 (2012): June

Section

Articles

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