Abstract

abstract:

In light of anthropologist Victor Turner's theory of liminality, this article constructed with a human touch of love and hope, and with a much-needed acknowledgment of alternative vision. Both the protagonist Kwan, who is a ghost seer, and the ghosts in her stories are liminal entities due to their crossings of boundaries between life and death, between the past and the present, let alone that between Chinese culture and American culture. Kwan's telling and enacting of ghost stories take advantage of this shared liminality and the possibility inherent in the liminal state. Since Tan spares no effort to depict Kwan's initiatives, this article proposes to interpret the possibility in the liminal state as Kwan's agency in revising the trajectories of lives. It examines how Tan explores the agency accompanying Kwan's telling and enacting of ghost stories and how Tan honors alternative ways of seeing the world through her authorial endorsement of Kwan's agency.

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