UNRAVELING PRECARITY AND RECLAIMED IDENTITY THROUGH LANGUAGE IN GINA CHUNG’S WOMEN-CENTERED NARRATIVES

This study explores how precarity and reclaimed identity are constructed through language in three short stories “Green Frog,” “After Party,” and “Rabbit Heart” from Green Frog Stories by Gina Chung. Positioning women-centered narratives as a critical space for articulating female experience, the study adopts a female reader’s perspective to examine how Asian American women negotiate emotional, bodily, and domestic vulnerabilities within diasporic contexts. Grounded in Judith Butler’s concepts of precarity and agency and informed by feminist literary criticism and Asian American literary studies, the research employs qualitative textual analysis focusing on narrative voice, figurative language, and affective expression. The findings reveal that each story represents precarity through distinct yet interconnected linguistic strategies: emotional restraint and silence in “Green Frog,” gendered emotional labor in “After Party,” and embodied fear and desire in “Rabbit Heart.” Despite persistent vulnerability, the female protagonists demonstrate agency through reflective narration, subtle resistance, and moments of linguistic self-preservation that enable identity reclamation. Overall, the study argues that vulnerability is not portrayed as weakness but as a generative condition through which women articulate resilience and reconstruct identity through language.