Imagining the Mother/Motherland: Karen Tei Yamashita’s ＂Tropic of Orange＂ and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s ＂Dictee＂

”Tropic of Orange” and ”Dictee” differ greatly in the manner they communicate a diasporic consciousness in a transnational context. Divergent as the two novels may be, they share the trope of Mother as Motherland. Examining the narratives centered on maternity and mothers, this paper attempts to explore the politics of maternity narrative in relation to nationalism in a transnational arena.The only mother figure in ”Tropic of Orange” embodies the victimization of the First World patriarchal capitalism. The linkage of the mother to motherland is further established by the concept of a cycle. Tracing the separation and reunion between the mother and her son, I demonstrate how she brings a discursive salvation for the overcapitalized dystopia evinced in the multicultural community of Los Angeles.In ”Dictee”, the motif of regeneration underlies the discontinuous, fragmented narrative of displacement in terms of gender- and nation-formation. The trauma of being displaced and colonized is closely related to the loss of the mother/motherland, which connotes a sense of pre-oedipal wholeness in the novel. In light of a feminist view of the woman's body, I illustrate how the birthing process in maternity could serve as a trope for the ”border-crossing” in a global context. The maternity narratives in these two postcolonial texts therefore destabilize the masculine idea of ”border,” and add a new dimension to transnational feminism.