IDENTITY MATTERS: LIFE WRITING OF EDWARD SAID’S OUT OF PLACE, JOY KOGAWA’S OBASAN AND MAXINE HONG KINGSTON’S THE WOMAN WARRIOR

• Main Authors: Chuen-shin Tai, 戴春馨
• Other Authors: Stephen Ohlander
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/67k824

博士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 英語學系 === 96 === Abstract This dissertation aims to explore diverse aspects of life writing encountered in literary studies within the particular form of autobiography and memoir as exemplified by Edward Said’s Out of Place, Joy Kogawa’s Obasan and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. One common feature is that these three works are so written that they can be appreciated by anyone who has ever felt the pangs of loneliness caused by the sense, whether real or imagined, of being an outcast of society. Chapter One features how Asian Americans write about their experiences, life and memories, which enables them to confront the suffering and pain of an absent identity and name. In turning these experiences into a form of writing, life writing resembles a class of literature in which people tell life stories and about the deepest matters of self-understanding. Following this, Chapter Two reconceptualizes Edward Said’s painful experience of being cut off from his homeland in Out of Place, repeatedly resulting in frustration and alienation. Moreover, this section discusses the various underlying meanings of the name “Ed,” “Edward,” and “Said.” Chapter Three exemplifies how the Japanese were exiled and alienated from their community during Second World War as a result of the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan. At the end of the story, Naomi turns silence into sorrow; this sorrow, however, illuminates the compensatory presence of love and peace. In Chapter Four, I discusss Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, which analyzes the variegated perspectives of Chinese American discourse and her identity as an outsider. Kingston’s work reflects the belief in writing as a site of creation and, through this act, the overcoming of an enforced destiny. Chapter Five examines the fundamental common ground of Said, Kogawa and Kingston by focusing on their common effort to present the problematizing of one’s subjectivity. In all, Out of Place, Obasan, and The Woman Warrior, reveal the stages of growing up, gaining an identity and becoming aware of one’s life and place in the world. Thus, Asian American writers search not only for their origin but for a place where they belong after a series of transformations. At the heart of these conflicts, just merely staying where fate has planted us provides no solution; it is belonging where one is that holds the key answer.