"Questing forward from experience:" Asian diasporic intellectual labour & identity formation

This thesis argues that Asian diasporic cultural production, beyond its representational value, is a manifestation of affective migrant home-building that contributes to our understanding of the Asian diaspora in Canada and the US as a community with a distinct identity. Interview data and intertextual literary analysis demonstrate that Asian diasporic cultural production has distinctive qualities that set it apart as a form of knowledge of its own. The intellectual labour that goes into cultural production, socially navigating institutions, and generating a sense of identity does not happen unbidden. In circumstances of unbelonging and unfamiliarity, participants had to find alternative ways to go about their work that wouldn't have been available to them if not for their displacement. Asian diasporic cultural production and intellectual labour afford the ability to open boundaries of racial identity and cultural community to new possibilities.