A Journey to Chinese American Women's Homes

• Main Authors: Liao Ping-Chun, 廖昺鈞
• Other Authors: Ching-chi Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/z3m4ye

博士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 英語學系 === 98 === The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how Chinese American women search for their homes, focusing especially on the racial discrimination they face, and concentrating on the sexual discrimination they encounter. Along the way, I will take into consideration the trend of transnationalism, which exerts notable influence over people’s sense of belonging and their ideas of homes. Considering Chinese American women to be ethnic Americans and also under the transnational trend, I will further elaborate that Chinese American women have struggled to find their homes in their own ways. My dissertation selects four prominent Chinese American novels and aims to contribute to the question: How do these four novels represent homes, women’s home in particular? The four Chinese American women novels I put together in this study, Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone, Gish Jen’s The Love Wife, Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses, and Chuang Hua’s Crossings, sketch different Chinese American home settings. So-called home in fact consists of more than one location. The home, which I choose to elaborate in my analysis, alludes to both the location we presently inhabit and homeland elsewhere. To investigate Chinese American women’s home-space, I take three major routes in the itinerary, that is, individual, community and (trans)national perspectives. Firstly, people conceptualize their ideal home-spaces and take different routes home. The differences sometimes bring conflicts to a family. Sometimes, resonant ideas of home form a powerful female bounding among women. Secondly, inhabited places in the United States, maybe Chinatown, are considered new homelands for Chinese Americans. Chinatown as an ethnic enclave segregates Chinese Americans from the rest of the American world but necessarily provides communal support for the growth of Chinese Americans. Thirdly, the homeland, where they are longing to go, is another meaning of home, and its image is undergoing change under the influences of globalization. Therefore, I approach Chinese American women’s homes from a (trans)national perspective. I put Ng’s Bone in my Chapter Two. Starting from San Francisco Chinatown in the United States, Chinese American women have been trying to escape from the choking confinement from a closed Chinatown community. They need to undertake a journey, challenging an invisible racial border of Chinatown. Next, beyond Chinatown, Chinese American women find their homes in a suburban neighborhood. Making homes in multiracial and multicultural societies is never the same with that in Chinatown. More complicated interracial interactions take place in an experimental Chinese American home portrayed by Gish Jen in her third novel, The Love Wife. That is to say, Chinese American women go on a journey, exploring space out of Chinatown. Therefore, I place this trip in my Chapter Three. Moreover, my Chapter Four examines Amy Tan’s Hundred Secret Senses. Traveling back to China draws routes for a journey between China and the United States. Such a journey indicates a possible homeland for Chinese American women in China. Therefore, a homeward journey has become a trip back to ancestral home. It further expands the meaning of home from an individual quest for homeland for Chinese Americans as an ethnic group. Eventually, Chinese American women travel farther to other counties, taking a transnational journey home, and finally return home in the United States. A homeward journey therefore extends from an individual quest for home, gradually in quest of her homeland, and to a transnational journey among various nations. Hence, Chuang Hua’s Crossings is discussed in Chapter Five.