À MI-CHEMIN ENTRE DEUX MONDES: PARCOURS FÉMININS CHEZ YING CHEN

Abstract

Ying Chen’s fiction is firmly grounded in a very personal journey at the intersection of two different worlds. Migration and mobility are key elements in the dramatization of a quest for identity that is both feminine and universal. The author focuses on the exploration of a metaphorical in-between in which the protagonists find themselves in a provisional situation, from the narrator of La mémoire de l’eau (1992), in transit, to that of Espèces (2010), in process of metamorphosis. An ambiguity acknowledged by the author who has observed: “though I have left, I have not yet arrived. […] I find myself half-way between my starting point and my elsewhere” (Quatre mille marches (2004, 40).