Beneath the Long White Cloud: settler Chinese women's storytelling in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

This thesis analyses settler Chinese women’s storytelling in Aotearoa New Zealand in order to articulate a conception of autonomous subjectivity within the context of hegemonic Colonialist Orientalist narratives. Utilising a bricolage methodology that combines the researcher’s creative writing with critical analyses of spoken and written stories, including interviews with authors, it focuses on Chinese women’s lived experiences and the narrative strategies they deploy. The prolonged absence of the feminine voice is barely acknowledged in extant studies of the settler Chinese community in New Zealand. Chinese women’s stories did not emerge in the public domain until the 1990s. While increa..