“This, and much more”: Constructing the Asian American Identity Through the Mother’s Melancholy in No-No Boy and The Joy Luck Club

This thesis explores intergenerational racial melancholy’s role in constructing Asian American racial and gender identities. It analyses two novels from opposite ends of the temporal and gender divide in Asian American literature: No-No Boy and The Joy Luck Club. By focusing on mother figures from both novels, this project leans into the power of storytelling and its uses as a translator of intergenerational melancholy. It reckons with David Eng and David Shinhee’s argument that melancholy is not necessarily pathological but can be productive. This project furthers their theory to argue that it is specifically intergeneration melancholy, the one inherited from parent to child — specifically from mother to child via storytelling in No-No Boy and The Joy Luck Club — which creates an authentic Asian American racial and gender identity.