The Drifting Lingnan: The Construction of Chinese Identity in Jan Lowe Shinebourne’s The Last Ship
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54097/ann7fm26Keywords:
Chinese-Caribbean; Identity; Lingnan cultural elements.Abstract
Jan Lowe Shinebourne is an influential Chinese-Caribbean writer from Guyana. Her fourth novel, The Last Ship (2015), tells the story of three generations of women in a Chinese-Caribbean family. Taking the novel as the research object, this paper examines the specific manifestations of Lingnan cultural elements and their relationship to the construction of Chinese-Caribbean identity through three dimensions: food, rituals, and material objects. The research finds that Lingnan cultural elements not only participate in the construction of Chinese-Caribbean identity, but also witness its fluidity and negotiation. At the same time, the novel suggests that Chinese-Caribbean identity cannot remain pure and fixed by relying on a single culture; instead, it is a dynamic process that continually evolves through the encounter of multiple cultures.
Downloads
References
[1] Lai, W. L. The Chinese in the West Indies, 1806–1995: A documentary history. University of West Indies Press, 1998, p. 9.
[2] Lai, W. L. (1993). Indentured labor, Caribbean sugar: Chinese and Indian migrants to the British West Indies, 1838–1918. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
[3] Su, P. The Chinese shop and carnival: Contested spaces for negotiating belonging in Willi Chen’s fiction. Caribbean Quarterly. 2021, Vol. 67 (No. 1-2), p. 38-56.
[4] Fischler, C. Food, self and identity. Social science information. 1988, Vol. 27 (No. 2), p. 275-292.
[5] Parasecoli, F. Food, identity, and cultural reproduction in immigrant communities. Social Research. 2014, Vol. 81 (No. 2), p. 415-439.
[6] Shinebourne, J. L. The last ship. Peepal Tree, 2015.
[7] Su P. The Chinese Caribbean diaspora and performative subjectivity in Jan Lowe Shinebourne’s The Last Ship. Neohelicon. 2023, Vol. 50 (No. 1), p. 191-205.
[8] Mehta, B. Notions of identity, diaspora, and gender in Caribbean women’s writing. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, p. 98.
[9] Bhabha, H. The location of culture. Routledge, 1994, p. 86.
[10] Assmann, J. Cultural memory and early civilization: Writing, remembrance, and political imagination. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
[11] Pechurina, A. Material cultures, migrations, and identities: What the eye cannot see. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
[12] Hall, S. Cultural identity and diaspora. In J. Rutherford (Ed.), Identity, community, culture, difference (pp. 222–237). Lawrence & Wishart Limited, 1990, P. 222.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Academic Journal of History and Culture
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
