Immigrant Muse: Sapphic Fragmentation in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictée, Hoa Nguyen's "After Sappho," and Vi Khi Nao's "Sapphở"

abstract:

This article explores three receptions of Sappho by Asian American writers, arguing that Sappho's fragmentation has made her a fellow immigrant in the eyes of these diasporic authors. Divorced from her social and cultural contexts on archaic Lesbos, Sappho signifies primarily as fragmentation itself, the loss of an originary whole. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha uses the corporeal fragmentation of fr. 31 LP in Dictée to interrogate the violence endured by the Korean people throughout the twentieth century, Hoa Nguyen ventriloquizes an always already fragmentary Sappho in "After Sappho," and Vi Khi Nao melds an array of fragmentary discourses in "Sapphở."