A Quest for Chinese American Identity: Creating the Location of Culture in Maxine Hong Kingston''s The Woman Warrior, China Men and Tripmaster Monkey.

• Main Authors: Lee Chia-fen, 李佳芬
• Other Authors: Huang Hsin-ya
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2002
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/96854467733527756622

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 英語學系 === 90 === Abstract Maxine Hong Kingston’s three volumes, The Woman Warrior, China Men and Tripmaster Monkey, disclose the struggle of Chinese Americans and their inner conflict when they confront a Chinese and American binary culture. Kingston believes that by retelling Father and Mother’s stories, Chinese Americans build their new cultural identity. This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One discusses Homi K. Bhabha''s assertions in Location of Culture as a theoretical framework for a cultural analysis of Kingston’s works. According to Bhabha, by articulating differences in the “Third Space” or the cultural “in-between,” the colonized Other produces its identity. This assertion can be applied to the readings of Kingston’s three volumes as, in her works, she strives to identify the differences in her cultural “in-between” and disclose a “Third Space” between her Americanness and Chinese-ness. Chapter Two explores how the narrator-protagonist translates Mother’s stories into her own in order to identify Chinese American “feminine differences” in The Woman Warrior. Chapter Three centers on the daughter’s writing a history which allows her Father to recover Chinese American “masculine differences” in China Men. The book argues for Chinese American rightful place in America, despite the fact that they are perpetually labeled as "foreigners."　 Moreover, Chapter Four deals with Tripmaster Monkey, in which Chinese Americans make a new community and collective identity in American society after re-telling their parents’ histories. Chapter Five recapitulates the main ideas of this thesis and affirms Kingston''s achievement in claiming America and reconstructing Chinese American cultural identity.