From National Memory to Self-Referential Symbol: The Rebirth of the Phoenix Metaphors among Chinese Immigrant Women

Abstract

This article focuses on the psychocultural perceptions and social interactions among a sample of 58 Chinese immigrant women in the Maricopa County, the metro area of the city of Phoenix, Arizona, and the manner in which they are able to negotiate multiple identity markers that in part influence and define their capacity to achieve and maintain self-referential growth. The sample of Chinese women living in the Phoenix area not only apply the metaphor of the phoenix to themselves, but also reference this mythical bird in their social media ID, clubs names, and themed events, and include it in oral traditions passed on to children. In comparison, they reject, negotiate, or resist the stigma and stereotypes attached to the “dragon” symbol which often convey qualities of overpowering and irrational oppression. Instead, they associate themselves with the heuristic of the phoenix as a tool for self-empowerment, virtue, well-being, and ethnic- self-representation. These spontaneous reconstructions of ethnic symbols and metaphors based on traditional cultural consensus allowed immigrants to develop cultural self-confidence because they believed that they had eliminated the possibility of discrimination, and eventually contribute to feasible solutions of silent symbolic violence.