Asian diasporic literature and contemporary life: a case of the silent ones and the joy luck club

Abstract

In an era of globalization, Asian diasporic literature in the United States has become a consequential discourse, turning marginal experience into critical knowledge about society and the modern subject. This article offers a comparative reading of Angie Chau’s Những kẻ thầm lặng (Chau, 2020) and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (Tan, 1993) to clarify the forms of “crisis” that shape Asian diasporic subjectivity and the narrative work through which memory is organized to articulate them. Drawing on discourse theory, postcolonial feminist criticism, and comparative literature, the study combines close reading with thematic and structural analysis. The findings identify three interrelated layers of crisis: (1) a crisis of social position under stratification and racialized stereotypes; (2) a cultural - linguistic crisis produced by normative dissonance between the homeland and the host society; and (3) a family - identity crisis in which trauma, silence, and generational conflict destabilize personal belonging. The article also shows that a fragmented-yet-connected narrative design - chapters/stories that are relatively autonomous but circulate within a larger narrative weave - functions as a mnemonic “stitching” mechanism, enabling characters (and the storytelling community) to re-locate the self amid displacement. Overall, the article argues that Asian diasporic literature not only reflects contemporary conditions of inequality and multicultural negotiation, but also opens a space for recognition and psychic repair, thereby reconfiguring the relationship between literature, society, and the human in the present.