Diasporic Authenticity Assertions: Analysis of Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter

Abstract

This essay is an attempt to examine the active interaction of history and memory, in formulation of a diasporic authentic picture of past, in Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter (2001). Amongst discursive disciplines, memory and history perform vitally, in picturing past; both attempt to reproduce events, by emblematic narrative acts. However, their erratic quality endorses the existence of counter- stories that endangers displaying a homogeneous past. Among miscellaneous categories of memories, autobiographical memory asserts to obtain an authentic presentation, but as any other forms of accounts, it exhibits an imprecise fictional image. This psychological alleviation ensures the future mental integrity of trauma victims. In memory narratives, the contingent temperament of power network and continual formulation of resisting frameworks might be explored. Tan’s diasporic assertion of authenticity, as a migrant writer, amalgamated with employment of fantasy is to obtain a shared diasporic identity, among her characters, although personal accounts of characters undergo an extensive amount of contingency. The newly forged identity is collective in nature and defies the geographical and temporal borders and grants a humane picture rather than a diasporic one; an identity that is established to venerate the cardinal role of personal memory, in endowing legitimate truth.