Mixed/Chinese: Mixed Race Chinese Canadian Literatures
Creators: Chan, Courtenay Dayle Cyn-Tze
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2024

<p>This thesis, Mixed/Chinese: Mixed Race Chinese Canadian Literatures, brings together the inherently interdisciplinary fields of Canadian Literature, Critical Mixed Race, Chinese Canadian and Asian Diaspora studies with the goal of broadening the intellectual potentials of mixed race Chinese Canadian literatures. I argue that mixed race Chinese Canadian literatures serve as underexplored pedagogical sites for radical anti-oppression discourse in Canadian scholarship. The texts investigated in this project reflect the experiential knowledges and creative interventions of self-identifying mixed race Chinese Canadian authors, namely, Edith Eaton/Sui Sin Far, Fred Wah, Mercedes Eng and myself. This project considers questions of identity alongside contemporary social, cultural and political contexts that influence the construction and representation of mixed race and Chinese bodies in Canada. The following question guides my analysis: How have structural hierarchies and power dynamics in Canadian society, along with community-based identity politics, created unequal subject positions, resulting in the limited conceptualization of mixed race in Canada? The central objectives of this thesis are to examine the multifaceted nature of mixed race Chinese Canadian aesthetics and to contribute to a literary history of mixed race Chinese Canadian cultural production. Moreover, this thesis aims to integrate mixed race perspectives into Canadian literary and cultural studies to foster scholarly discussions about racial prejudice and systemic inequalities. Mixed/Chinese thus reinforces the legitimacy of those represented within this body of literature and scholarly debates. <br>
Mixed race Chinese Canadian literatures reflect a range of formal, narrative and stylistic approaches, offering a unique perspective on the histories, experiences and legacies of race and racism in Canada. Mixed/Chinese comprises an extensive introduction that includes a synoptic overview of the project and its theoretical, cultural and political stakes. In Chapter 1, Edith Maude Eaton/Sui Sin Far’s self life narrative, Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian (1909), is read through the lens of Minelle Mahtani’s mixed race theory, mobile paradoxical spaces. A language of mobile paradoxical spaces empowers the prioritization of feminist, non-binary knowledges and agency of mixed race women in identity work. Chapter 2 shifts the focus to Fred Wah’s oeuvre to explore the fissures and tensions within existing conceptualizations of multiraciality in Canadian Literature/CanLit. I argue that Wah’s “faking it” politics/poetics constitute a multi-generational mixed race methodology, drawing on both Wah and his father’s experiential mixed race Chinese Canadian knowledges. Chapter 3 tackles the mediation of racialized voices in Canada’s history through an examination of Mercedes Eng’s explosive poetics in her recent publications, Prison Industrial Complex Explodes (2017) and my yt mama (2020). In my analysis, I demonstrate how, in both poetry collections, Eng utilizes hybrid poetics to envision mutually nourishing relationships within and between minority groups in Canada and poetically undercut Canada’s isolating regimes. Chapter 4 utilizes research creation, combining poetry and exegesis, to explore the metaphors of bodies as archives and living in language. Throughout this exploration, I emphasize the importance of lived experiences and prioritize innovative methods of knowledge production, particularly concerning mixed race representation and theory. The Coda revisits the project’s core arguments and introduces potential future areas of research, advocating against conclusive readings of mixed race Chinese Canadian representation. Instead, I encourage curiosity around the various conversations and themes present in mixed race Chinese Canadian literatures.</p>