Condemned Isolation in Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You (2014) and Jean Kwok’s Searching for Sylvie Lee (2019): The Failure to Blend in | ||||
| Egyptian Journal of English Language and Literature Studies | ||||
| Volume 13, Issue 1, 2024, Page 13-34 PDF (356.67 K) | ||||
| Document Type: Scientific Articles | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/ejels.2024.413596 | ||||
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| Author | ||||
| Abeer Mohammed Raafat Mohammed Khalaf | ||||
| Associate Professor of English Literature, English Department, Faculty of Arts, Assiut University, Egypt | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| Asian Americans have captured public attention since the release of the Chinese American writer Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Worrier in 1976, a memoir narrating her immigrant experience in America. Asian Americans, whether immigrants or second generation, have been facing many problems since the 1950s. Their suffering is everlasting as they are exposed to harassment, bullying, and backlash. To understand the experience of Asian Americans, two novels by Asian American writers have been chosen: Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You (2014) and Jean Kwok’s Searching for Sylvie Lee (2019). The two novels highlight racism but focus on familial relationships. Everything I Never Told You narrates the story of a mixed-race family in America in the 1970s while Searching for Sylvie Lee is about a Chinese immigrant family to America in the 21st century. An understanding of these two novels is provided through the lens of Asian Critical (Asian Crit) framework in addition to applying the Relational–Cultural theory (RCT). After analyzing the two novels, it is revealed that the influence of Lydia’s and Sylvie’s mothers is more detrimental to their psychological well-being than their experience of anti-Asian racism sentiment. Lydia and Sylvie lose their lives due to the absence of healthy relationships. They are destined to experience condemned isolation which sends them straight to their death since no one recognizes their needs. | ||||
| Keywords | ||||
| Asian Americans; AsianCrit; racism; Relational–Cultural Theory | ||||
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