Seeking Identity Between Worlds

The common human struggle to establish a distinct identity is an issue of universal interest in literary history. Chinese American women writers have a natural affinity for the identity-seeking process of Chinese American women, who must deal daily with several cross-cultural sets of expectations and experiences. In their works, they often raise questions about the relationship between ethnicity, gender, and identity. With cultural criticism as its theoretical guideline, this dissertation intends to study Chinese American women's literature focusing on the identity-seeking theme and the writing artistry accommodating the theme. Through careful reading of Maxine Hong Kingston's and Amy Tan's works, the author attempts to visualize the social and cultural structures embedded in Chinese American women's literature, to understand the narrative and artistic practices that have shaped their works, and eventually shed some light on the general tendency of integration and synthesis in Chinese American women's identity-seeking process.Judging by the materials I have collected, the identity issue of Chinese American women is still a field in Chinese American literary studies which has not been wholly and systematically gone into. From a perspective other than that of American scholars, a perspective of a native Chinese woman, the writer of this paper hopes to present an alternative view, and thus broaden the study field of Chinese American women's literary criticism. This aim is intended to be achieved by making the best advantage of the native Chinese cultural background as well as a detailed textual analysis of Chinese American women's literature with the help of modern literary theory.In the wake of the civil rights and feminist movements, there have appeared many Chinese American women writers who seek to claim Chinese American as a new cultural identity and try to revise their gender identity by writing about their own ethnic history and culture. They explore through their writings the paradoxical nature of ethnic American identity and gender identity. Among these writers, Kingston has been the most influential. The central theme in all of her writing-The Woman Warrior, China Men, Tripmaster Monkey-is the attempt to sort out what being Chinese Americanmeans through the exploration of her experiences as an American-bom child of immigrant parents. Amy Tan is another Chinese American woman who addresses the important theme of identity confusions of Chinese American women. She explores the transition of cultural identity by telling of the problematic relationship between Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters. The generational conflicts and reconciliation often reveal the progress of the American-born daughters' rejection and acceptance of their mothers' Chinese cultural heritage. Other Chinese American women writers such as Edith Eaton, Jade Snow Wong and Gish Jen also like to explore the identity-seeking issue. Due to the limitation of space and time, this paper will mainly draw on Kingston's and Tan's works as basic material, with brief mention of others' writings.Chapter One analyzes the layers of silence imposed on Chinese American women resulting in an anxiety of identity, and illustrates the impetus and ways of their struggle to break the silence and forge a new identity for themselves. Doubly marginalized, Chinese American women suffer double oppression. They are the victims of both American hegemonic ideology, which devalues them because of their race, and patriarchal ideology, which devalues them because of their gender. Moreover, patriarchal oppression conies not only from colonialist Americans, but from their own patriarchal Chinese culture as well. The civil rights and feminist movements prompted Chinese American women to break the silence enjoined upon them. With indomitable will and unshakeable self-confidence, Chinese American women writers are speaking out against American stereotypes of Chinese Americans and affirming their own concepts of femininity and "Chinesesness".Chapter...