Where Is Home? Boundary Space in Yangsze Choo’s The Ghost Bride and The Night Tiger

Abstract This article analyzes two fictional novels by Malaysian Chinese author Yangsze Choo: The Ghost Bride (2013) and The Night Tiger (2019), to excavate the cultural complexes, implications, and imaginations that Malaysian Chinese bear in the context of Chinese diaspora by examining the notion of the “boundary space” and the function of these spaces in the process of identification. By drawing on the work of Henri Lefebvre, Edward Soja, Homi Bhabha, Christine M. Schonewald, and others, it sheds new light on the spatial dimension of Choo’s texts which have received rare reviews in recent years. It pays attention to the spiritual spaces in the afterworld as the “boundary space” that not only separates the living from the dead but also helps the protagonists negotiate the cultural boundaries between ancestral China and colonial Malaya. The mysterious and supernatural space in the katabasis then becomes not only a division between life and death but also a negotiation for identity in the Chinese diaspora.