Search results for "Chuang Hua"

Displaced desires : the dislocated self and melancholic desire in Chuang Hua's Crossings and Fae Myenne Ng's Steer toward rock

2015

This essay investigates two aesthetically innovative Chinese American prose narratives, Crossings (1968) by Chuang Hua and Steer Toward Rock (2008) by Fae Myenne Ng, which have so far inspired relatively few scholarly readings. Although published forty years apart, both texts convey a melancholic image of displaced desires—loved ones who are lost, beyond reach, or unresponsive—that is echoed by their complex narrative structure and rich stylistic repertoire. Drawing from the psychoanalytically informed notion of racial melancholia, this essay argues that in Chuang’s Crossings and in Ng’s Steer Toward Rock the dynamics of melancholia manifest most prominently in the ways their dislocated cha…