“We are Children of the Dragon”: Hakka Heritage and the Negotiation of Chinese Caribbean Identity in Easton Lee’s Poetry
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54097/9k4z6x64Keywords:
Easton Lee, Heritage Call: Ballad for the Children of the Dragon, Hakka Culture, Chinese-Caribbean identityAbstract
This article examines the Hakka cultural inheritance and identity negotiations in Easton Lee's Heritage Call: Ballad for the Children of the Dragon. It argues that the collection of poems constructs Chinese-Jamaican identity through the interplay of ancestral memory, everyday practice and relational belonging. The article first explores ways of reimagining the Hakka ancestral homeland as a narrated and ethically charged space, rather than as a fixed origin of return. It then looks at the way in which Lee presents food, rituals, language and shop routines as embodied practices of cultural transmission. Finally, it shows how Hakka heritage is negotiated in Jamaican family and community lives. Ultimately, Lee's poetry imagines Chinese Jamaican belonging as a creolised formation rooted in memory, performance, and translation.
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