The Strange Space of Home Outside Home: Diaspora as Heterotopia in SKY Lee’s "Disappearing Moon Café" (1990)

Abstract

The notion of heterotopia – a space which simultaneously mirrors and distorts the reflection of the real world – introduced by Michel Foucault is often used in human geography and social sciences to discuss different spaces existing within multicultural societies. One of such spaces is a diaspora, a place uniting people on the basis of their ethnic identity and inhabited by those who are often perceived by the host culture as undesirable and, therefore, should be isolated. However, diaspora is not empty and idle; instead, its inhabitants use the space provided by the host society to recreate the places known to them, mirroring and, at the same time, distorting and modifying them. The aim of this paper is to discuss the depiction of diaspora as heterotopia in SKY Lee‘s debut novel “Disappearing Moon Café”.