身份认同的缺失——从后殖民女性主义角度解读小说《宝塔》

The Loss of Identity—A Postcolonial Feminist Reading of The Pagoda

非裔牙买加作家帕特丽夏•鲍威尔(Patricia Powell)的长篇小说《宝塔》讲述了华人移民刘(Lowe)在牙买加的生活经历。19世纪中期,刘为躲避包办婚姻女扮男装搭乘贩运契约华工的船到了牙买加。作为在殖民地生活的移民女性,刘的性别身份认同遭到了父权制的侵害,其文化身份认同也受到了殖民主义文化霸权的压制。本文从后殖民女性主义的角度出发,深入探究主人公如何在父权制与殖民主义的双重束缚下,产生了性别与文化身份认同的双重危机。

The Pagoda, a novel written by African-Jamaican writer Patricia Powell, tells the life experience of Lowe, a Chinese immigrant in Jamaica. In the mid-19th century, Lowe, in order to escape an arranged marriage, disguised herself as a man and boarded the ship transporting Chinese inden-tured laborers to Jamaica. As an immigrant woman living in the colony, Lowe’s gender identity was lost due to patriarchal perceptions, while her cultural identity was suppressed by the colonial cultural hegemony. From the perspective of postcolonial feminism, this paper analyzes how the protagonist has suffered a dual crisis of gender and cultural identification under the double oppression of patriarchy and colonialism.