A post-colonial reading of three novels by Ty-Casper, Rosca and Hagedorn.

The dissertation addresses the problem of how contemporary Philippine American novels are representative of post-colonial literature. The novels are described as having emerged out of the experience of colonization and readings of the texts point out the themes which foreground the tension between the past masters and the once-colonized Filipinos. Other post-colonial themes identified involve the journeys which lead to self-discovery and the recognition of the necessity to abrogate the neo-colonial authority or even to appropriate the centrist position in rejecting the marginalized, dislocated role imposed by the colonizer. Symptomatic readings of the novels identify the authors' strategies in the use of language as a post-colonial tool in writing back to the center. Interlanguage, syntactic fusion, code switching, glossing, variable orthography, magic realism, illusion and parody result in reconstituting, creatively reconstructing and forging a fully appropriated post-colonial language.