Yan Geling’s Fusang—The “Who” and “Where” of “Fifth-Generation Immigrant” Writing

Abstract

This article aims at examining a narrative written originally in Chinese, and published in 1996, that was considered even before its first English translation in 2001 a challenge to the canon of American literature, especially if viewed from the LOWINUS perspective. This stance that advocates a transnational expansion of the field of American Studies by adopting a multilingual approach to American literature will be put into perspective with considerations of what Tseen Khoo calls “a work’s multivalent existence,” in order to delineate the multiplicity of real and symbolic cultural locations associated with Yan Geling’s writing. To achieve this goal, the analysis will explore the ways in which, by taking up the subject of female immigration and sojourning and defying conventions of both North-American- and Chinese-centered epistemic practices, Fusang provides a thought-provoking induction into the problematic of contemporary Asian/(Asian) American configurations and crossings. It will be thus evinced how “fifth-generation immigrant” authorship comes as an interrogation of processes of representation, narration and inscription, in a permanent intersection of familial, communal, national, textual and intertextual memories and realities.