Negotiating masculinity: Rereading male figures in Gish Jen, Frank Chin, Gus Lee, and Maxine Hong Kingston's novels

White society's stereotypes of emasculated Chinese American men are a consequence of the politically, historically, and culturally enforced "feminization" of Chinese American men in American society. To correct the skewed image of Chinese American men, both male and female Chinese American writers endeavor to reconstruct Chinese American masculinity. This dissertation thematically studies how Chinese American male and female writers reconfigure Chinese American male figures and redefine Chinese American masculinity. While many critics are limited by gender, cultural, and racial dualism, this dissertation offers close readings and critical analyses of male characters in Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men, Frank Chin's Donald Duk, Gish Jen's Typical American, and Gus Lee's Honor and Duty from the perspective of gender and cultural negotiation. It does not attempt to discover an idealized paradigm of Chinese American manhood that can appeal to feminists or nationalists or both. Rather, demonstrating the heterogeneous characteristics of Chinese American manhood requires regarding them as individuals with different qualities of manhood, placing them into various social contexts, and locating them in the "ups" as well as the "downs" in their lives. Since manhood is not static, but constantly changing and is socially, historically, and personally constructed, I position the subjects in the interlaced categories of ethnicity, gender, class, family, generation, sexuality, and various social contexts. The study manifests the fluidity and heterogeneity of masculinity and demonstrates that Chinese American men are changing in their efforts to participate in gender and culture negotiation.