A Study On The “Third Space” In Chinese American Poetry

The development of Chinese American poetry marks the track of space practice of Chinese immigrants.The elder generation sailed faraway from their homeland to the“Gold Mountain”,only to wander around the otherland seeking for a new home to settle down.Chinese Americans eventually managed to cross over border,identity and class to explore in a wider world.Meanwhile,they attempted to reconstruct a dreamland in real and imagined space.To resist the stereotyped narratives catering to mainstream American culture,the Chinese American poets inherit the cultural memory of the elder generation in their displacement from homeland,otherland and dreamland,presenting writings of rich and diverse experience with poetic language of great density,detachment,vigor,or radicalness.Chinese American poetry embraced its emergence of budding into magnificent scale from late 1970s to the dawn of 21^st century.Chinese American poets carried out cultural production through writing,making positive contributions in striving for equal power and expanding living space of the Asian ethnic group.Therefore,the creation of Chinese American poets functions as space production in both abstract and realistic sense,which coincides with the thought of"the third space"proposed by theorists and scholars such as Homi K.Bhabha and Edward Soja.At the cultural level,Chinese American poets’poetry writing,as a marginal literary practice,subverts and dissolves the hegemony of mainstream culture.At the social level,the writing and study of Chinese American poetry promoted the formation of transnational Chinese literary community.Through the modern information network,the literary community mainly composed of Chinese poets,Chinese and American scholars and readers build a platform for communication,and further promote the dissemination and research of beautiful poetry.At the poetic level,the poets applied the strategy of hybridity in the construction of textual space,creating a poetic space of"others",which is different from the mainstream poetics with languages,styles and allusions of hybridity as well as diversity.With its focus on the Chinese American poetry published between late 1970s to the dawn of the 21^st century,this thesis mainly investigates the works from four significant anthologies and ten representative poets.Based on the"Third Space"theory initiated by Homi K.Bhabha and Edward Soja,the poetic analysis is conducted with the interdisciplinary paradigm of literary space study.The thesis organization follows the development of space and history,synthesizing historical facts with spatial analysis in the articulation of real and imaginative space in the poems from multiple dimensions of spatial themes.Thus,the dissertation is to reveal the third space constructed during the social practice of Chinese American poets such as cultural production,resistance against/for power.Two of the collections published in the 1980s are of great historical and cultural significance,i.e.Island:Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island,1910-1940 and Songs of Gold Mountain:Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown,which are translations of Chinese poems by early Chinese immigrants.Both works are edited with juxtaposition of target text and source text,as well as literature and history,which reflects the translators’determination to spread ethnic culture and restore historical space.These works showcase hybridity in the translators’identity,in language,cultural and translation strategy,which represents the experience of early Chinese immigrants living in the margin,and poses counteraction to the mainstream discourse on history.Meanwhile,the activities of publishing,translating,adapting and communicating as events of literature not only accelerated the canonization and institutionalization of Chinese American literature,but also actively participated in shaping geographical environment and ethnic Chinese cultural landscape in America.The two collections and their related cultural practices have played a dynamic role in constructing the historical space of the early Chinese immigrants.In the same period,“Unbound Feet”,a group of Chinese American female poets,held their position at the marginal space as ethnic minority women,challenging the patriarchal culture of the white supremacy.Through poetry creation and performance,they appealed for space as ethnic Chinese women with impressive audacity and achieved geographical and social mobility.As leading members of Unbound Feet,Nellie Wong,Merle Woo and Kitty Tsui combined their poetry creation with social activities,and engaged in the social practice of expanding the space for ethnic minority women,fighting for equal rights and interests,and subverting stereotypical images.The cultural practice of the“Unbound Feet”poets coincides with the strategy of"choosing marginality"proposed by black feminist theorist bell hooks in the 1990s,whose concept of marginal space is regarded as an extension of the third space.She believes that choosing marginal space consciously is a strategy to highlight one’s subjectivity,with positive significance in the resistance against hegemonic culture.The spatial differences generated with interwoven factors of gender,race and class rendered the multiple marginalization of Chinese American women.However,the cultural margin can also be a"third space"with infinite possibilities and openness.The“Unbound Feet”poets reconstruct the cultural tradition and identity of ethnic Chinese women through their poetry writing and build a third space at the margin of mainstream culture,making significant contributions in striving for equal rights and interests for women of minorities in the United States.The geographical space in contemporary Chinese American poetry is characterized with symbolization and imagery.The circulation and migration of early Chinese immigrants in the geographical space generated a series of spatial memory.These geographical spaces bearing the immigrant experience of earlier generations were symbolized and repeatedly appeared in poetry as spatial images.From the origins of immigrants such as Tangshan,Hong Kong,Guangdong,Beijing and Nanjing to the transit stations and settlements of immigrants such as Gold Mountain,Chinatown,Angel Island and Rocksprings,these geographical spaces bear the traumatic memories of Chinese immigrants in different periods:Rocksprings is a place filled with blood and tears where Chinese workers suffered the anti-Chinese violence;Angel Island symbolizes the prison where earlier immigrants were mistreated with humiliating imprisonment and interrogation;Chinatown is not only a place for Chinese immigrants to settle down,but also a patriarchal society with hidden risks.Poets constantly invoke the typical spatial images in their works,which perpetuates and updates the historical connotation of geographical space,while maintaining the inheritance of traumatic memory in ethnic Chinese community.Since the 1990s,Chinese American poets have won important literary awards successively,and their poems were anthologized in mainstream literary works.The poets of younger generation who grew up in the dual cultural context are deeply influenced by American poetry of modernism;meanwhile,they are willing to borrow from the essence of classic Chinese poetry,explore and innovate in the convergence of two cultures.With hybrid language,diversified style and transplanted allusions,Chinese American poets explored a hybridized textual space,gradually constructing a poetic space with distinctive characteristics,and eventually breaking out from the domination of mainstream American poetics.