earticle

영어

This paper examines Ha Jin’s literary works that represent his transitional moments from a Chinese writer to a Chinese American writer: The Crazed (2002), War Trash (2004), A Free Life (2007), The Writer as Migrant (2008), and A Good Fall (2009). It considers how Jin’s emergence and growth as a diasporic writer is embodied through his characters’ trajectories of transnational migration across/beyond borders. This theme is analyzed under the topic of departure, arrival, and/or return, a common theme in diaspora literature. The departure and arrival of Chinese people in diaspora is not a linear and one-time event in their lives. They rather need to tackle it continually, perhaps until they may feel a full sense of belonging. This, however, is not a condition of life that can be easily fulfilled by people in diaspora. Hence, Jin’s Chinese people in diaspora are depicted as selves situated in between the tension between the national and the transnational and agonizingly coming to terms with such tension enduringly. This becomes their existential life condition that contributes to the formation of their diasporic identities. Jin also shows how he tackles such an existential life condition as a writer in exile and how such struggle enables him to deal with the theme of return and create an imaginary homeland in/through his diasporic writing.