  korobko-kv-vestnik-2026-2.pdf |
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- Diaspora as a category for literary interpretation of memory and ethnic identity in Chinese American prose of the late 20th – early 21st centuries
- Korobko K.V. Diaspora as a category for literary interpretation of memory and ethnic identity in Chinese American prose of the late 20th – early 21st centuries. Vestnik of Kostroma State University, 2026, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 147–153. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.34216/1998-0817-2026-32-2-147-153
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.34216/1998-0817-2026-32-2-147-153
- УДК: 821(510+73).09”20/21”
- EDN: DTBNXW
- Publish date: 2026-03-24
- Annotation: The paper examines diaspora as a category of literary analysis applicable to the interpretation of memory and ethnic identity in Chinese American prose of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The corpus comprises English-language literary texts by authors of Chinese origin situated within the U.S. literary field, represented by works by Amy Tan, Anchee Min, Yiyun Li, R.F. Kuang, and Emily X.R. Pan. The research problem is defined by a shift from a socio-demographic understanding of diaspora to its treatment as an analytical framework that enables one to describe how migratory experience and ties to both a real and an “imagined” homeland are transformed into the text’s poetics. The methodological framework draws on theories of diaspora (W. Safran, R. Cohen) and concepts of cultural memory (M. Halbwachs, J. Assmann), as well as interpretive and narratological analysis aimed at identifying recurrent poetic patterns across the corpus. The study delineates typical strategies of representing memory and identity – the “family archive” narrative and the intergenerational transmission of experience; the recoding of cultural signs; bilingualism and translingual insertions as a mnemonic device; and the conflict between canon and archive. The paper concludes that, in the texts examined, diaspora functions as an interpretive perspective that reveals how the experience of cultural rupture is reworked into literary poetics, whereby ethnic identity acquires narrative and semantic articulation.
- Keywords: diaspora, migration experience, literary poetics, Chinese American prose, ethnic identity, cultural memory, hybrid identity, translingualism.
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