Originally written in Chinese or English, their migrant voices bring in a minor language to major traditions (Chinese literature and American English literature). Whereas writing in an adopted tongue of English, as attested by Ha Jin himself, unleashes his creative and critical urges, for Bai and Nie writing in Chinese in a foreign land as America does likewise and ushers in the critical distance cherished by the migrant writers to work on the subject matters of exile and cross-cultural critique. The article proceeds to recuperate the diasporic narratives of Sinophone authors Bai Xianyong and Nie Hualing as two earlier examples of migrant writers in the Cold War phase of overseas Chinese American writing. I opt for the idea of a “migrant subject” as brought up by Ha Jin to underscore a diverse verbal strategy and mobile literary creativity: that of the migrant writer who initiates linguistic and literary perversions to actively intervene in the cultural politics of both the host country and the motherland. This paper addresses the politics of language, identity, and diasporic Chinese writing in early and emerging Chinese migrant literature.
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