The Literary Construction of Identity: A Comparative Study of Chinese Americans and the British Chinese

In the context of global transformations, the analysis of cultural production can
be a fruitful way of eviscerating the complex negotiations of identity
construction for what Stuart Hall calls ‘new ethnicities’ (1988). The
sociological study of creative literature is an area that has been little explored
and holds the possibility of offering significant insights into the strategies and
ideologies of identity. This chapter offers a comparative study of contemporary
Chinese American and British Chinese literature to uncover how the processes
of identity construction in narrative fiction are shaped by their different
national and political contexts.