피터 바쵸의『세부』에 나타난 혼종적 주체, 젠더, 민족성

Abstract

‘Asian-American literature’ addresses literature by a group of people who have their ethnic heritage in Asian countries and the Pacific rim. However, the notion of ‘Asian- Americans’ betrays the specificity and diversity of each ethnic group within. To examine figures of immigrants and second generation ethnic minorities in the US through literary representation plays a significant role in locating the unity and diversity of Asian- Americans. For such a purpose as to locating the specificity of each ethnic group within the Asian Americans, this paper examines Cebu by Peter Bacho in terms of hybid identity, gender and ethnicity. The image of the US as a new home in Filippino American literature is not a unified and fixed one but has been on constant shift. While Carlos Bulosan represents the Phillippines as an idyllic place in spite of its extreme poverty and the US as a hostile, yet promising space for individuals to realize their dreams in, Peter Bacho presents the US as a place where reason, order, and stability rule. This idealization of the US simultaneously contributes to representing the Phillippines as a space where corruption, superstition, and all other forms of cultural savagery takes place. The protagonist’s round trip from the US to the Philippines functions as a bridge between the two cultures. Since his trip was caused by his mother’s death, it connects Philippines’ past characterized by colonialism, loss of female subjectivity, and virtually enforced marriage of a powerless colonized girl his mother experienced and the US as a space of its afterwards. The protagonist’s position as a Catholic priest makes him an agent between the sacred and the propane. His hybrid identity as an Asian-American also enables him to bridge the cultures of the US and the Phillippines. In the Philippines, he experiences loss of self-discipline, destruction of his beliefs and promise to God, and cultural confusion. However, he also comes to cast a refreshed look on himself and the world he used to belong to due to his encounter with the Filipino specificity epitomized by such characters as Clara and Ellen. By representing all incongruous and conflicting cultural elements between the Philippines and the US, between Americanized Filipinos and FOBs, and between the colonized and postcolonial Philippines, Peter Bacho delineates the complex situations of Filipino Americans as well as the past, present, and possibly future of their lives.