Crafting Lives: The Evolution of Identity in the Works of Zhu Tianxin and Kapka Kassabova

Abstract

This thesis addresses the issue of how women writers conceptualise identity through their writing, with specific reference to the literary careers of Zhu Tianxin and Kapka Kassabova. A new approach to this issue is offered, which considers writing as located on the continuum between auto/biography on the one hand and fiction on the other. Each writer's life and writing are considered as a whole, an intertwined and complex entity. This responds to the extreme biographical tendency in the prevailing criticism of both writers which tends to read their works through an understanding of their lives. This emphasis on autobiographicality, both assumes that the writers present their lives through writing and offers readings through fixed and over-simplified impressions of cultural and political stereotypes. By contrast this thesis reveals the extent to which, in their writing, both Zhu, a second-generation Chinese émigré in Taiwan and Kassabova, a Bulgarian migrant in both New Zealand and the UK, actively and creatively exploit the political and cultural environments in which they operate. It further reveals how the complexity of narrative techniques deployed in each case, including polyvocality, intertextuality and blurring of genres, reflects the complexity of each writer's conceptualisation of identity. In addition, through an original delineation of specific phases in each writer's literary career, the evolution of identity presented by each writer via the increasing complexity of her narrative techniques is identified. The radically new readings offered by this thesis are informed by its comparative approach. The parallel study of two writers from contrasting backgrounds enables each to illuminate the other in fresh and productive ways, particularly with regard to the way each writer differently exploits history and geography. This thesis presents Zhu as an alternative historian and Kassabova as an alternative geographer: through the exploitation of history and geography in their narratives, the writers construct a self and an identity. Their personalised and subjective de/constructions of history and geography also challenge any collective sense of history and geography, questioning the existence of an objective view of either discipline. Thus Zhu and Kassabova create multiple and inclusive views of identity, advocating for its hybridity and multiplicity. By so doing their work resists and problematises readings which are solely from a biographical perspective or from a single political/cultural viewpoint.