ABSTRACT
Related to Marilyn Chin’s anguish over the “half ” of her self that “is almost gone” are the entangled issues of memory and identity. “We are made of our memories” (1987, 290), as Edward Casey points out. In this sense, the study of identity must involve the examination of what we have remembered as well as what we have forgotten. In the process of diaspora, owing to temporal, geographical and cultural dislocation, some “fair sides” of Asian diasporas’ original languages, traditions and customs might have faded and become increasingly intangible. But paradoxically, cultural memory, however vague, is essentially significant for Asian diasporas’ efforts to understand themselves and to articulate their identities. It is like a whisper from the subliminal depths that has survived the effects of historical amnesia to remind them of who they are, and it involves conscious and unconscious assumptions about certain dimensions of their cultural knowledge and emotional experiences.
