| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 英語教育研究所 === 85 === This thesis amis to analyze how Maxine Hong Kingston, as a
minority woman writer, uses umlti-versions of text to speak for
the silenced Other--Chinese male immigrants--in her award-
winning book China Men. Her writing reclaims Chinese American
subjectivity as well as deconstructs/rereads old Chinese and
Western texts. As a matter of fact, she revises American
history and literature. As immigrants of color, Chinese
Americans have been regarded as non-white Other by the
mainstream society. They are depriveof voice in canonical
American literature and history. Moreover, stereotyped by the
discourse of American popular culture, they are portrayed as
either the insidious Fu Manchu or the docile Charlie Chan.
Reflecting upon the stereotyped images, Kingston attempts to
reconstruct their identity. As the book's Chinese title, Gold
Mountain Heroes [Jin-shan Yong-shi, 金山勇士] suggests, she
intends to identify Chinese men as abrave Gold Mountain heroes
and to make them the subjects of her narrative. Indeed, inChina
Men, which she designates as the father-book, she empowers the
Gold Mountain heroes with a justifiable identity to succeed
Abraham Lincoln as American founding fathers. To present the
true stories of the Gold Mountain founding father. To present
the true stories of the Gold Mountain heroes, Kingston invents
the new literary structures of multi-versions of text. She
adapts mother's talk-stories to represent the Chinese
immigrants' life experience. Besides, she appropriates Chinese
and Western literary classics, news reports, personal diaries,
and articles of law to supplement their stories. The multi-
versions of text form intertextual references and dialectic
relationships between texts, within texts, and beyond texts.
Through writing, Kingston, in effect, revises the structure and
contents of the white-male-centered American history and
literature. She also successfully makes the history of Chinese
immigrants a part of American history.
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