The Chinese Caribbean diaspora and performative subjectivity in Jan Lowe Shinebourne’s The Last Ship

Conclusion
The Chinese diaspora, with its individual differences and particularities, is not a 
unified or homogeneous group but has diverse and heterogeneous identifications. 
The Chinese diasporic identity—subject to constant reimagination, reinvention and 
renegotiation—is provisional, fluid and contested. The novel 
The Last Ship
revises 
the distorted representation of Chinese diasporic people prevalent in the Carib-
bean by focussing on the lives of Chinese-Caribbean females whose voices have 
seldom been heard. These women’s struggling for subject formation demonstrates 
that the Chinese-Caribbean diaspora construct their identity performatively in the 
tension of contact between different cultures. Because of this performative nature, 
the identity performance of Chinese-Caribbean females might be contradictory and 
unstable, shaped but not totally determined by personal choices or the dominant dis-
course. Clarice’s performance is first demonstrated by the change of her name from 
a Chinese to a Western one, an effort to integrate into the colonial Caribbean dis-
course. Nevertheless, the local people insist on calling her The Old Lady, a result 

---

 P. Su 
1 3
of her other conflicting performative deeds of acting an ‘authentic’ Chinese iden-
tity through cultural practices such as family storytelling and eating. This insistence 
reveals the failure of her naming performance. The Chinese tradition of family sto-
rytelling is performed by both Clarice and her granddaughter Joan to explore, under-
stand, and position their diasporic selves and identities, but with different focusses 
and strategies. Finally, the act of eating is used by Chinese diasporic women to 
negotiate their subjectivities. Through the performative rituals of cooking and eat-
ing, Clarice reshapes and reconstructs her Chinese identity, while Susan assumes 
an Indian identity. The identity troubles tormenting both Clarice and Susan demon-
strate that identity performances orienting one in a single direction to one’s home 
or host culture lead in the Caribbean to the Chinese diaspora’s poor sociocultural 
and psychological adaptation. Performances that engage in mixing different cultures 
construct a hybrid and threshold diasporic subjectivity that adapts well in the con-
tact zone of the Caribbean.