Asian DiasporaThe Asian diaspora, or the personal and cultural implications of leaving one's country of origin, is a central and recurring theme for Asian American writers. Diaspora means "the dispersal of seeds" in Greek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora), and its ancient denotation has today taken on a figurative meaning as a feeling of separation and detachment. In Fae Myenne Ng's Bone and Chitra BanerjeeDivakaruni's Leaving Yuba City, a thematic thread of "scattered parts," strangeness, and otherness ties each person's characters, as well as the two separate works, together. This diaspora affects each generation of immigrants in slightly different, but no less significant, ways. As an aspect of diasora, WEB DuBois's notion of "double consciousness" in The Souls of Black Folk takes the form of a personal duality for the characters in Bone and Leaving Yuba City. Their lives looking through DuBois' "veil" creates a personal struggle in the character's relationship with America, simultaneously maintaining two unique cultural identities. The characters in Ng's novel Bone struggle to conceive of a third identity, one that maintains old traditions while being "Americanized." This struggle is not exclusive to first-generation Chinese immigrants, Leon and Mah, but has deeply impacted their American-raised children, Leila, Nina, and Ona. However, the consequences of this conflict are different depending on the generation. Léon cannot settle in the same place but he is “suddenly there, suddenly gone” (54). Leon's lost jobs are often on a ship, and Leila concludes that the attraction of the "hollow, still center of the ocean" for him is "completion" (150). The cause of Leon's absence, or lack of personal integrity, is that his Chinese self is trying to change...... middle of paper ...... characters in Leaving Yuba City and Bone are related by a common separation from their homeland, or double self seen in all generations. This shared diaspora creates a unique and painful family dynamic for the Leong family; their incompleteness binds them together. For Sushma in "Leaving Yuba City", she does not feel separated from her homeland, but lives denying a fundamental part of herself, which is very much like her homeland. This is an incongruity or separation between the person others may see and the person they really are. Sushma personifies DuBois’ “veil.” An extremist view of the diaspora is that of "mutilated dancing men", having phantom limbs and being physically incomplete. Ng and Divakaruni depict the same desperate and painful feelings that accompany a separation from both your homeland and yourself, showing that these two are inseparable and fundamental to the wholeness of each person..