Rewriting canonical love stories from the peripheries

Abstract

Compares postcolonial and postmodern intertextuality in Taiwanese and the Caribbean texts. Hsien-Yung Pai's "Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream" (1966) and Tien-Hsin Chu's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1997) are two short stories which depict identity crises of first generation and second generation (waishen gren, mainland immigrants). In these two texts disillusionment towards the center's romantic prospects is the lived reality for those compelled to accept their currently marginalized status and adopt hybrid flexibility as a practical survival strategy. In comparison, Jean Rhys in Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and Maryse Condé in La Migration des coeurs (1995) deconstruct the love prospects from within for purposes of disenchanting the passing down of particular romantic fallacies. Rhys and Condé highlight race and ethnic hybridity to problematize love formulas. As rewritings from the peripheries, Rhys and Condé explore problematic and creative places and spaces of hybrid reconstructions providing insight into the hidden restrictions and possibilities of border crossing. © Purdue University.