Previous studies on Marjorie Evasco have explored feminist, ecological, and cultural dimensions of her poetry. However, limited scholarship has examined how her poems simultaneously engage Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity and Jean‑François Lyotard’s critique of grand narratives. This qualitative study analyzes Shadow Mothers, Caravan of the Water Bearers, and Birds of Paradise through an integrated postmodern feminist framework. Specifically, this examines the persona-vision-addressee transaction, imagery and symbolism, and figures of sounds. The results of the study show that Evasco’s poems reveal postmodern feminist visions: the reconstruction of Filipina women’s roles as mothers, the reclamation of women’s historical agency through collective resistance, and the representation of Filipina women’s identities as fluid rather than fixed. The poems employ fragmentation, intertextuality, and alternative narratives to challenge colonial patriarchy and question dominant assumptions on gender, history, and authority in the Philippines.
This article examines the early poetry of Wang Duqing through a transcultural lens on modernism, arguing that his work demonstrates how literary modernity in China emerged through interactions across languages, aesthetic systems, and cultural traditions. Rather than treating modernism as a self‑contained national phenomenon or as a unidirectional import from the West, the study situates Wang Duqing’s poetry within a multidirectional flow of early twentieth-century world literature. Through close readings of his poems, the article focuses not only on the presence of European Symbolist and Decadent influences but on the specific poetic effects generated by their interaction with Chinese linguistic and literary traditions. By analyzing elements such as Symbolist imagery, Verlaine’s musicality, and Decadent sensibilities in Wang Duqing’s works, the study challenges the perception of early modern Chinese poetry as derivative or merely “Westernized.” Instead, it shows how these elements are reconfigured within a Chinese poetic framework, producing new formal and aesthetic effects—such as shifts in rhythmic texture between vernacular and lyrical registers, the transformation of color imagery through Chinese modes of suggestion, and the integration of multilingual diction into the poems’ structure. Transcultural modernism is, therefore, understood not as the coexistence of influences but as a process operating within the text’s formal and linguistic structure. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that Wang Duqing’s poetics, marked by multilingual expression, sound–color correspondences, and recurring themes of sorrow, exile, and decline, constitute a distinct mode of modernist writing. His poetry generates hybrid forms that cannot be reduced to either Chinese or European traditions, but emerge from their interaction. By repositioning Wang Duqing within the context of global modernism, the article highlights the importance of transcultural approaches for understanding early experiments in modern Chinese literature, not as instances of imitation, but as sites of formal innovation and transformation.
This article examines Vietnamese American diasporic literature through the framework of the hero-victim stereotype, understood not as a recurring trope but as a representational structure produced through power relations and cultural discourse. Drawing on theories of stereotyping and subject formation, the article analyzes selected works of Vietnamese American literature, with particular attention to Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees, The Sympathizer, The Committed, and Nothing Ever Dies. It argues that Vietnamese American literature has often been structured by two dominant positions: the victim, associated with war trauma, displacement, silence, and vulnerability, and the hero, embodied either by restorative nostalgia for a lost homeland or by the model-minority narrative of successful assimilation. While these positions emerge from both dominant American representations and diasporic self-representations, Nguyen’s works expose their limitations and ideological foundations. Through figures such as the hybrid “bad subject” and the sympathizer, Nguyen destabilizes the hero-victim binary and proposes alternative forms of diasporic subjectivity grounded in ambiguity, self-critique, empathy, and nonviolence. The article argues that Nguyen’s fiction and criticism move Vietnamese American literature beyond the restrictive alternatives of victimhood and success, opening a space for more complex understandings of identity, responsibility, and belonging in the aftermath of war and migration.
This study investigated the influence of academic motivation, information motivation, and social motivation on first-year students’ physical library visiting behaviors and examined how these behaviors affect their intention to use the library for learning. Using Planned Behavior Theory (TPB), this study addresses the growing need to understand student engagement with physical academic libraries in the post-COVID-19 educational landscape, where digital resources and hybrid learning models have substantially changed information retrieval practices. Data were collected through an online questionnaire from 430 first-year students enrolled in three A-accredited public universities in Sumatra, Indonesia. The proposed model was analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The measurement model shows satisfactory reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity, and no multicollinearity. The findings revealed that academic motivation did not significantly affect students’ physical library visit behavior. On the other hand, information, motivation, and social motivation have a significant and moderate positive effect on visiting behavior. Furthermore, the behavior of library visits strongly predicts students’ intention to continue using the library in learning activities. Mediation analysis showed that visiting behavior significantly mediated the relationship between information motivation and intent to use, as well as between social motivation and intent to use. The structural model shows good predictive validity and model fit, explaining 50.6% of the variance in visit behavior and 61.7% of the variance in intent to use. These findings point to a shift in student engagement towards physical libraries, where information access and social interaction have been stronger drivers of library use than academic motivation. The study contributes to the literature on library user behavior by extending the SDGs to a post-pandemic context and offering practical implications for academic libraries seeking to improve student engagement through information-rich environments, collaborative learning spaces, and positive user experiences.
This research explores the folk literature in the Philippines, specifically the folk literature on coconut. Methodologically, the study extensively gathers data from diverse folk forms like riddles and proverbs sourced from Damiana Eugenio’s collection. Fieldwork in the primary province where coconuts originate in the Philippines which is Quezon Province supplements the study with contemporary riddles and proverbs collected from the coconut farmers through a focused interview. After a rigorous literary and cultural analysis, the riddles and proverbs unveil the coconut's important roles, spanning historical origins to everyday applications. It highlights the coconut heritage in Filipino folk literature, portraying it as a metaphorical embodiment of the “Tree of Life.” The findings contribute to scholarly discussions on folk traditions, offering insights into the complex cultural heritage of the Philippines. By exploring the coconut's cultural symbolism and practical significance, the research enriches understanding on how coconut heritage shaped Filipino identity.
