Mel Kritikopoulos L&S Arts & Humanities
Inherited language use in 21st c. Vietnamese diasporic autofiction
Diasporic storytelling is not without the acknowledgement of language shifts. My research focuses on how contemporary authors in the Vietnamese diaspora use their inherited languages (French and English) to create works of multigenerational autofiction that offer insight into the experiences of their respective diasporic communities through a literary analysis of Line Papin’s ‘Les Os des Filles’ and E.M. Tran’s ‘Daughters of the New Year.’ I will use close reading, bibliographic research, and person-based reportage to ask two major questions: first, how does the form of autofiction reveal these modern female authors’ conceptions of their gender and generation? Second, what is the impact of using a non-Vietnamese language to tell stories deeply tied to the Vietnamese experience? This project expands on topics that have been discussed separately and with older novels, combining varied methods and understandings under one proposal and bringing them into conversation with modern, women-focused texts.
Message To Sponsor
I would like to extend a note of gratitude to my donor for all their support in my research endeavors this summer. Thanks to their generosity, I was able to leave the library and travel to the heart of a population I was considering deeply in my research. The SURF scholarship allowed me to extend my efforts beyond the borders of California. Travelling to the core of the community in which I was involved in researching, I have gained a deeper understanding of my field and the impacts my project may provide to it.