Article published In: Narrative Inquiry
Vol. 34:1 (2024) ► pp.53–77
“By whom was I left behind?”
Identity struggles in the narratives of Chinese leftover women (sheng nü)
Published online: 18 November 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.21095.yan
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.21095.yan
Abstract
Applying (2012). Narrative practice and identity navigation. In J. A. Holstein & J. F. Gubrium (Eds.), Varieties of narrative analysis (pp. 99–124). Sage. practice-oriented analytical framework for
narrative identity as produced through specific linguistic behaviours, this research focuses on the context-specific construction
of multiple identities in the accounts of Chinese leftover women (sheng nü). It also seeks to investigate how
they negotiate selves and handle struggles in both the storyworld and the storytelling-world by examining the trinity of form,
content and context narrated in seven semi-structured interviews. This research reveals that these unmarried Chinese women attempt
to narrate a positive positioning of self. They deconstruct the socially ascribed leftover identity but renegotiate a gendered
self as either invisible or visible women integrated within an agentic ‘excellent’ (youxiu) self, albeit somehow
disrupted within the diverse embedding of patriarchal cultural accounts.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Literature review
- Bamberg’s (2012) dimensions and a reflection
- Methodology
- Critical analysis: Narrated identity struggles
- Repudiated leftover self
- Gendered self: Invisible or visible women?
- Narrated ‘manly woman’ (nü-hanzi)
- Deconstructed third-gender
- ‘Excellent’ (youxiu) self: Agency in (dis)continuity
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
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