Mapping Identity in Chinatown: A Spatial Critique of Yan Gelling’s The Lost Daughter of Happiness

Abstract

Investigations of Chinatown in Chinese American literature have typically adhered to two fixed paradigms: it is portrayed either as an oppressed ghetto or as a nostalgia-laden cultural enclave. Grounded in classical spatial criticism, this paper integrates recent insights from the sensory turn and decolonial space studies to re-examine Chinatown. Although existing scholarship on Yan Geling’s The Lost Daughter of Happiness (2001) has extensively addressed its feminist and narrative dimensions, its underlying spatial logic remains underexplored. The novel foregrounds three interrelated dynamics—the urban discipline imposed upon immigrants, their embodied sensory resistance, and the ongoing negotiation of hybrid identity. This paper argues that Yan constructs a nuanced model of spatial belonging, illuminating how immigrants inhabit and reshape their environment through sensory experiences, cultural practices, and mobility across contested boundaries. Ultimately, this study explores identity formation amid spatial oppression, everyday acts of resistance, and the reconstruction of self-identity in contemporary contexts, foregrounding the complex negotiation of cultural belonging and identity among Chinese immigrants.