Identity Formation of Chinese Canadian Women in Sky Lee's Disappearing Moon Cafe

Sky Lee is one of ethnic writers who dare to challenge the long-run silence of marginalized group, by the means of writing in English about historical experience of her community. Her book, Disappearing Moon Café which was published in Vancouver in 1990, immediately caught the public attention and won the City of Vancouver Book Award while being nominated the Governor General’s Literary Award. Lee, as a female writer, cares very much about females’ struggle for identity from one generation to the next. With the influence of postcolonialism and women’s movements, identity became more and more concerned by the minority groups. Postcolonialists hold that women from the Third World countries are under the dual oppressions. On the one hand, they are subjected to racial and cultural discrimination under Euro-American dominated society; on the other hand, they suffer from gender prejudice in both white hegemony and patriarchal doctrines. For more than one century of racial discrimination and segregation, Chinese Canadians have been on the brink of mainstream society. Whereas the females have a crueler condition as they are the victims of being marginalized from racism and gender prejudice simultaneously. In Disappearing Moon Cafe, all female characters have suffered self-loss to some extent. Therefore, how to construct its own identity becomes an urgent problem that needs to be solved. This thesis will introduce the living conditions of Chinese Canadian women and the identity crisis they encounter by the means of rereading the novel Disappearing Moon Cafe. Based on the theories of postcolonialism, feminism and other identity theories, this thesis will conduct a multi-dimensional study on the self-identification of Chinese Canadian women through the in-depth analysis and study of the novel Disappearing Moon Cafe. Mainly divided into two parts, it focuses on how Chinese Canadian women form their own identities in terms of cultural and gender perspectives. First of all, being aware of the conditions they are in, Chinese Canadians have to trace back to their origin and gain power from their own profound traditional culture while challenging and resisting the cultural hegemony in Canadian society. They should rediscover the silent history of its own ethnic culture and aware the great contribution the ancestors made to the development of Canada. Canadian born ethnic Chinese are easy to get confused for self-identity as they are not accepted by white race on account of physical appearance while being considered as not pure Chinese at the same time. Thus, they have to find a comfort in the marginalized state and establish the unique hybrid culture. Secondly, the prejudice toward females demands for a solution. This thesis summarizes three necessary approaches for the establishment of female identity by analyzing the image of women in Disappearing Moon Café: gaining for political, vocational and educative rights while awakening of female consciousness as well as breaking silence through female discourse. Nowadays, equality between races and sexuality is becoming increasingly important. While marginalized groups are receiving more attention in literature field, it is of great historical and practical significance to study the Chinese Canadian women’s experiences in the mainstream culture of Canada while to explore their identity formation in both cultural and sexual perspective.

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