Rethinking Hybridity—Amputated Selves in Asian Diasporic Identity Formation

This chapter reflects upon the emphasis on more flexible transnational allegiances and multiple loyalties by reconsidering the formation of hybrid identities: historical and cultural specificities are indispensable to such identities, and yet they are also challenged by new forms of imaginaries and senses of belonging. Through the Bildungsroman form, a self-referential consciousness is employed by Simone Lazaroo (Singaporean Australian writer) to intervene strategically in the politics of representing cultural and gendered Otherness and to build diasporic identities within and across racially exclusionary settings where there is no consistent self, but amputated selves.