Transformation of Bicultural Korean American Identity from Role Confusion to Fidelity in Julia Cho’s Durango

Fahim, Lamia; Ibrahim, Areeg; Abou Alam, Samia Abdel Meguid

doi:10.21608/hies.2023.425608

Transformation of Bicultural Korean American Identity from Role Confusion to Fidelity in Julia Cho’s Durango

Document Type : Research Papers/Extracts from dissertations

Authors

¹ Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Helwan University

² Helwan University - Faculty of Arts - English Department - Cairo - EgyptSamiaS

10.21608/hies.2023.425608

Abstract

This article discusses the psychological grievances of a Korean American household haunted by past traumatic experiences and drained with sociocultural constraints. Adolescents’ psychosocial development is analyzed in Korean American Julia Cho’s Durango (2007) in accordance with the theories of the American psychoanalyst Erik Erikson (1902-1994). Korean American adolescents undergo an intensified struggle between identity and role confusion concluded with the virtue of fidelity as they pledge their loyalty to a lasting coherent set of occupational and cultural identification images. Ego identity gives conformity to all discrepancies in the identification images within American minority adolescents’ psyche. The representation of Korean American adolescents in Durango demonstrates a pressing urge to ratify occupational as well as ideological commitments that pave the way to identity formation. Julia Cho’s Durango depicts how the ego identity of Korean American adolescents overcomes role confusion through the realization of the virtue of fidelity.

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