Title: The Overseas Literary Representation of Bougainville Civil War: On Cultural Identity Construction in New Zealand Novel Mister Pip

Abstract: Due to the intervention of multiple external forces, the Bougainville Civil War in Papua New Guinea has evolved into a regional issue. New Zealand contemporary novelist Lloyd Jones provides a representation of the civil war in Mister Pip, revealing the cultural identity construction of different communities in Melanesia. From the perspective of cultural identity as proposed by Stuart Hall, this paper argues that Mr. Watts who represents the immigrants on Bougainville Island, Dolores and her daughter on behalf of two generations of aborigines, construct their own cultural identities through grafting British culture, protecting native culture and blending the two cultures together. To some extent, Mister Pip metaphorizes the cultural trajectory of New Zealand, which provides certain space for reflecting on the cultural identity construction of different New Zealand ethnic communities in the age of globalization.

Keywords: Bougainville Civil War, New Zealand contemporary novel, Mister Pip, cultural conflict, identity construction

Authors: Luechang Liu, Professor, School of Foreign Languages, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, China; Le Wu, Research Assistant, President’s Office, Anhui Hefei Medical and Health School, Hefei, Anhui, China.