Exile as Empowerment: Select Readings of the short stories of Mimi Lok

Abstract

Reading Mimi Lok’s select short stories through the lens of diaspora and exploring the possibilities of multiculturalism, this paper underscores the ever-transforming transnationalism that reinforces the concept of cultural hybridity of the diaspora. When looked into the two short stories by Mimi Lok, viz. “Last of Her Name”and “The Wrong Dave”, the ideas of home, sojourn, identity of the Chinese diaspora tend to take up new dimensions. ‘Home’ for the diaspora community is no longer just a token of longing but a station that liberates it from the burden of having to choose; that allows the hyphenated space not to be ‘lacking’ butto be all inheriting. Identity today means so much more than the binary us/them or the ‘exile’ and ‘displaced’. Diaspora communities today possess the power to fashion their own cultural identity by blending the disparate elements that the world has to offer. A sojourner in the twenty-first century stands rather as a transnational being with a sense of being an heir to all that he/she comes in contact with.This paper shall explore the journey of diaspora subjectivities from sojourn through settlement to transnationalism to highlight the process of assimilation, adaptation, cultural hybridity and mimicry respectively. It shall also look into the mother-land’s sub-conscious desire of engaging in diaspora in search of empowerment.