Cultural Identity in Jean Kwok’s Novel Searching for Sylvie Lee

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.211110.002How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Cultural identity; Stuart Hall theory; Cultural dislocation; Chinese Immigrant; Searching for Sylvie Lee

Abstract

Searching for Sylvie Lee written by Jean Kwok portrayed a life of Chinese immigrants in America. Sylvie Lee as the main character has the role to experience cultural identity and cultural dislocation since she moved from the Netherlands to the United States of America when she was young without knowing deeply about her ancestors’ land and culture. She begins to learn the American-English language and American culture to be accepted as an American citizen. This research uses qualitative research with the novel Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok as the source of primary data. The primary data are in the form of dialogues and narrations from the novel that represent the facts and information about cultural identity and cultural dislocation. They are supported by the secondary data related to the diaspora, cultural identity, and cultural dislocation gathered from diaspora’s books, papers, journals, and articles. The discussion of this article aims to analyze the complexities of the cultural identities of the main character by using Stuart Hall’s theory of cultural identity. It is used to analyze the process of Sylvie Lee as the main character changes her cultural identity and experiences of cultural dislocation. This research concludes that the main character Sylvie Lee finally understands that she is not Chinese anymore because she no longer understands Chinese culture, language, and ideology. Nevertheless, she is not completely considered an American because of her physical shape such as slanted eyes, lifestyle, habit and skin color that indicate she is forever part of the Chinese race. Sylvie Lee is trapped in a situation of being and becoming. Furthermore, Jean Kwok as author tries to describe immigrant’s experiences of cultural identity and dislocation as the impact of doing immigration.

Copyright

© 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Almas Aprilia Damayanti
AU  - Lily Tjahjandari
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/11/21
TI  - Cultural Identity in Jean Kwok’s Novel Searching for Sylvie Lee
BT  - Proceedings of the International University Symposium on Humanities and Arts 2020 (INUSHARTS 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 8
EP  - 13
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211110.002
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.211110.002
ID  - Damayanti2021
ER  -