Voicing silence in Asian American women's literature : Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Theres a Hak Kyung Cha, and Joy Kogawa.

Abstract

Asian American women writers' position in the mainstream literature deserves special attention because it carries cultural, political, and historical connotations. Trinh T. Minhha's Woman, Native, Other, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee, and Joy Kogawa's Obasan challenge, redefine, and reinvent the phallogocentric perception of notions such as discourse, history, and political power. The construction of gender, political and cultural identity through the use of language as well through its absence occupies a central place in the discussion of the three authors' creations. The three Asian American women writers confront the three folded burden of being "the Other" in terms of race (Asian), socio-political class (minor/Other), and gender (female). By using Trinh T. Minh-ha's text as a theoretical background, I demonstrate that in both Dictee and Obasan silence is an act of resistance and subversion against the stereotypes of the dominant power, and it is not an act of accepting one's victimization and oppression.