Merlinda Bobis's use of magic realism as reflected in "White Turtle" : moving across cultures, redefining the multicultural and dialogic self

Abstract

Merlinda Bobis was born in the Philippines but now lives in Australia, which turns her into a ‘translated’ woman, that is, a woman who has been carried across different cultures and who consequently cannot be defined by making exclusive reference to any of them. Her condition of in-betweenness provides her with a privileged perspective that allows her to talk from different angles, and thus bridge the gap, or else bring to the fore, the discontinuities that separate one world from another. The aim of this paper will be to show how “White Turtle”, the short story that gives the title to the collection of stories that Bobis published in 1999, makes use of magic realism and relies on Bakhtin’s well-known notions of heteroglossia, hybridization and polyphony to encapsulate the most pressing concerns of postcoloniality and, by extension, of the multicultural diasporic subject.