Fantastical Features as Postmodernist Fiction Strategies in Ken Liu’s Selected Works

Abstract

The Paper Menagerie” and “Good Hunting” are short stories in Ken Liu's short story collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. These stories tell of Chinese descent in tales that are often seen as magical realism. This research discusses the postmodernist strategies used in the selected stories by analyzing the presentation of fantastical elements in the form of magical events in the stories. Brian McHale’s perspective on postmodernist fiction is employed in this research to find the construction of worlds within the selected stories and the reasons behind them. This research used a qualitative method. This research requires two kinds of data, primary and secondary data. The primary data of this research are narrations from Liu’s “The Paper Menagerie” and “Good Hunting” concerning fantastical features which appear as magical events and are presented as a postmodernist strategy. On the other hand, the secondary data are any facts and information taken from secondary sources about Chinese cultures, diaspora, histories, and other related topics that support the primary data analysis. This research followed an inductive approach, examining specific textual elements before broader themes were identified and interpreted. This research has found that in Liu’s “The Paper Menagerie” and “Good Hunting,” the fantastical elements presented through the stories in the form of magical events are foregrounded in Chinese cultural elements and histories. These magical events are part of postmodernist strategies to construct multiple worlds that contain plural perspectives of truths. While both stories have different contexts and narrative styles, the fantastical elements present in both contain a local and diverse perspective that refuses the dominant perspective imposed by Western metanarratives. In doing so, Liu’s works propose a pluralistic perspective where different realities coexist. The construction of plural worlds usingfantastical elements in a postmodern narrative framework reflects a postmodernist magical realism in which magic is not a mere fantastic element but a tool to give voice to truth.