Welcome to Francis Academic Press

Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, 2024, 7(5); doi: 10.25236/AJHSS.2024.070507.

The Lost Other in Community: James’s Dilemma of Cultural Identity in Everything I Never Told You

Author(s)

Yulin Wang, Xiaodan Wang

Corresponding Author:
Yulin Wang
Affiliation(s)

School of Foreign Studies, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China

Abstract

Everything I Never Told You is the debut novel of a Chinese-American woman writer Celeste Ng. By demonstrating the invisible contradictions behind the seemingly harmonious interracial Lee family and revealing the death of the favorite daughter Lydia, it shows that the minority group of Chinese Americans are faced with the dilemma of cultural identity under the influence of two cultures and they hold a strong desire to build a community in the mainstream white society. This paper intends to focus on the protagonist James as a representative of Chinese Americans to explore the cause of his identity dilemma in community as well as tragic consequences happen to his life, marriage, and family from the perspective of post-colonialism. Despite the fact that Chinese Americans find it difficult to search for self-identity as the lost other, they have always aspired to build a community free from discrimination and marginalization in the space where different cultures meet.

Keywords

Everything I Never Told You; Other; Cultural identity; Community

Cite This Paper

Yulin Wang, Xiaodan Wang. The Lost Other in Community: James’s Dilemma of Cultural Identity in Everything I Never Told You. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences (2024) Vol. 7, Issue 5: 37-41. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJHSS.2024.070507.

References

[1] Shi, Lin. Racial and Ethnic Groups in America. Beijing: China Minzu University Press, 2006.

[2] Ningsih A K. The Cultural Differences And Identity In Chinese American Family In Everything I Never Told You By Celeste Ng. Jurnal Pendidikan Indonesia, 2023, 12(1): 236-249.

[3] Kairunnisa A, Ariyani L D. The Psychological State of Lydia as A Child of Dysfunctional Family in Celeste NG’s “Everything I Never Told You”. Metaphor, 2020, 3(1): 68-86.

[4] Wang, Hua. “Tragedy of Escape and Pathology of Culture: Celeste Ng’s Narrative Ethics in Everything I Never Told You.”, Foreign Languages Research, 2020,37(04):106-111. DOI:10.13978/j.cnki.wyyj.2020.04.016.

[5] Wang, Fang. “Gaze and Transcendence: Existentialism in Everything I Never Told You.”, Contemporary Foreign Literature, 2017,38(03):81-89.DOI:10.16077/j.cnki.issn1001-1757.2017.03.012

[6] Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1979.

[7] Hall, Stuart, et al. Modernity and Its Futures. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992.

[8] Yin, Yan, and Liu, Junping. “‘The Other’ Trapped in a cultural Dilemma. an Analysis of Celeste Ng’ s Everything I Never Told You.” Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Arts, Design and Contemporary Education, 2016, https://doi.org/10.2991/icadce-16.2016.71.

[9] Lu, Wei. “Deconstrction and Reconstruction through Interpolation: A Postcolonial Reading of Chinese American Literature.”, 2005. Beijing Language and Culture University, PhD dissertation.

[10] Ng, Celeste. Everything I Never Told You. London: Penguin Books, 2015.

[11] Zhang, Dongmei. “‘Secrets I Have Never Told You’: On Racial and Gender Discrimination in Everything I Never Told You.” , Literatures in Chinese, 2(2018):60-65.

[12] Guo, Yingjian. & Wang, Fang. “The Disenchantment of the Model Minority Myth: On the Spiritual Crisis of Chinese Americans in Everything I Never Told you.” English Studies, 6(2017):62-70.

[13] Tönnies, Ferdinand. Community and Society. Naples: Mockingbird Press, 2021.

[14] Wang, Xiaoling. & Li, Xingxing. “The Agency of Shame: Affect and the Construction of Chinese American Subjectivity in Everything I Never Told You.”, Contemporary Foreign Literature, 2021, 42(1):37-43.

[15] Tao, Jiajun. “Introduction to Cultural Identity.” Foreign Literature. 2004(2):37-44.

[16] Du, Xingyu. & Su, Rui. “The Cultural Identity of Chinese American Group in Everything I Never Told You.”, New West, 6(2019):117-118.

[17] Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso Books, 2016.

[18] Chen Yanqiong. “A Brief Analysis of Marginalization in Everything I Never Told You.” Journal of Literature and Art Studies, 8(2017):982–985.,https://doi.org/10.17265/2159-5836/2017.08.005.