| In 2022,Alice Pung was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for service to literature.In 2007,her first memoir,Unpolished Gem,won the Australian Book Industry Newcomer of the Year Award.The story of a Chinese Australian girl growing up over eighteen years is interspersed with the stories of the women in her family,creating a portrait of a group of women from a Chinese Australian immigrant family.Unlike the classic portrayal of women in previous refugee novels,refusal to be persecuted is a strong theme running through Unpolished Gem.Drawing upon the space theory of Henri Lefebvre,this thesis explores the construction of female identity in Unpolished Gem and reveals the oppression of women by patriarchy and racism in domestic space and public space.By studying the space oppression suffered by women in Unpolished Gem,this thesis deconstructs the definition and restrictions of space on female identity,and analyzes women’s ways of reinventing themselves.The disjuncture is firstly demonstrated through the restriction of female spatial activities manifested from domestic space.The strong surveillance and stereotypical images of women hindered their autonomy development.Through self-awakening,women challenge the absolute power of patriarchy in domestic space.In public space,women suffer from the dual oppression of patriarchy and racism.By acting against the spatial inscription,women claim their subjectivity.Through the construction of the lived space,women transcend the oppression of domestic space and public space.They reshape their subjectivity,formed themselves in the lived space,and gain the ability to further transform social space.This thesis confirms that Alice Peng,by portraying the immigrant women in her family,highlights the oppression of women in social space and provides readers with ways to their female identity construction.This,in turn,inspires the development of immigrant women’s identities in the context of globalization. |
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