When Third-World Expatriate Meets First-World Peace Corps Worker: Diaspora Reconsidered in Shirley Lim’s ＂Joss and Gold＂

This paper addresses the undoing of hierarchies in the context of the Chinese diaspora. In Shirley Lim's novel, ”Joss and Gold”, the race riots that occurred in Malaysia on May 13, 1969 serve as a pivotal event that thereafter disperses all the characters to various places. Li An, the female protagonist, succeeds in her career and satisfactorily settles herself in Singapore, while the male protagonist, Chester Brookfield, arrives in and departs from Malaysia as a confused and naïve American; instead of ”rescuing” anyone in Asia, he finally finds his salvation through fatherhood in Singapore. When the third-world expatriate meets the first-world Peace Corps worker, the images of the vulnerable East and the heroic West are demystified, the impracticality and institutionalization of academic studies in the humanities are exposed, open family kinships that disregard blood relations are created, and virtues such as forgiveness, mutual understanding and support are exalted. Diaspora as such proves to be not a forced and tragic leaving of one's home, but a saving grace for many of the characters. Lim has treated her diasporic characters with leniency, but several questions raised in this book are critical and sharp.