Cultural Negotiation and Adaptation: The Poetic Analysis of Li-Young Lee’s Rose from the Perspective of “Jin Jiang Dai Hu”

Abstract

The poetic collections of Li-Young Lee over different periods encapsulate the subtle and complicated process of cultural negotiation and adaptation, which can be summarized as a constant process of “Jin Jiang Dai Hu”, it may not only provide a lens for a better understanding of his poetry, but also enable us to delve into the diasporic Chinese community overseas. Most importantly, such process makes it possible for us to track the psychological development through his diasporic poetry, Rose is a good case in point. The study aims to analyze the selected poems from Rose through the perspective of “Jin Jiang Dai Hu”, trying to find how Lee cope with the “cultural shame”, “cultural amnesia”,   his sense of alienation and  displacement both to his original homeland and adopted homeland after his family’s settlement in America, which corresponds to his early poetic period. Therefore, the poetic analysis of Lee’s poems may epitomizes the diasporic Chinese community overseas.