A Comparative Study Of The Woman Warrior And Typical American From Cultural Perspective

In the last four decades, Chinese American literature has made great progress. There emerges a new generation of creative and influential Chinese American writers, whose works receive much praise from the readership. Chinese American woman writer Maxine Hong Kingston's first book The Woman Warrior (1976) firmly establishes the author's important position in American literature. In the novel, Kingston portrays Chinese American women's life experiences and carefully examines their inner world from unique perspective. As an early Chinese immigrant descendant, Maxine Hong Kingston, like the protagonist Maxine in The Woman Warrior, is a marginalized person living between two cultures. It is hard to define her identity with traditional concepts of ethnicity and culture. However, there is no denying that the uncertainties in her ethnic and cultural identity have provided her with a different perspective from other mainstream writers. Gish Jen is the representative figure of new generation Chinese American writers. Her debut novel Typical American was published in 1991, which is widely believed to have gone beyond the dilemma of cultural identity.This thesis intends to make comparison between Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior and Gish Jen's Typical American in order to find out the difference between two woman writers in different times. There are lots of signs of Chinese culture in The Woman Warrior, but this doesn't mean that Kingston is an advocator of Chinese traditional culture. The Chinese culture she mixes into her novel is reconstructed by which she attracts lots of native American's attention. Frank Chin, a male Chinese American writer, criticized that Kinston's rewriting of Chinese traditional culture was a kind of betrayer of ancester's tradition and it was a flatter to the taste of western readers. Gish Jen gives up a lot of themes that apperaed in former Chinese American literature, such as conflicts between two generations and Chinatown. Typical American is a story of new Chinese American immigrants who strives to be typical Americans. Cultural conflicts are gradually replaced by acculturation as the development of multiculturalism. Hybrid identity of Chinese American is accepted and become popular.This paper is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is an introduction of this two Chinese American writers and their work The Woman Warrior and Typical American. The literature review and relevant theories are also listed here. The second chapter studies the different expression of Chinese and American culture in The Woman Warrior and Typical American. Kingston's rewriting of Chinese myths and literary classics is fresh to readers at that time. The exotic oriental culture reflected from the novel and the feminist struggle in Chinatown help Kingston win lots of attention, not only from readers but also from the critics. But Gish Jen emphasizes that Typical American is an American story. Her dilution of ethnic background makes her work more universal.The third chapter investigates the cultural conflicts and acculturation of these two works. As the development of multiculturalism and the rising of Chinese American status, the dilemma of between-worlds condition of early Chinese immigrants is no longer exist. The conflicts between mother and daughter in The Woman Warrior is a good expression of cultural conflicts. The subtitle Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts shows that Chinese American girls grow up in the surroundings that full of ghosts, including Chinese ghosts and American ghosts. The protagonists in Typical American change from typical Chinese to typical American signifies that ethnic background will not become barrier of minorities' development in America.The fourth chapter discusses the search of identity in two novels. Kinston creats different kinds of woman warrior by telling stories. Gish Jen indicates the fluidity and hybridity of Chinese American identity. Chinese American is a hybrid identity, which is neither Chinese identity nor American identity. The concept of "Salad Bowl" and multiculturalism gradually changes the marginal status of Chinese American's hybrid identity. This chapter will analyze the marginality of hybrid identity and the prospect of hybrid identity in both worksThe last chapter is conclusion. As the transformation of American society from "Melting Pot" to "Salad Bowl", great and delightful changes are happened in both Chinese American and Chinese American literature. Chinese American literature is diversifying its styles and themes, and is trending towards maturity. The hybrid identity of Chinese Americans becomes popular. Chinese American literature gets more attention and recognition from American mainstream society and literature academy. That is to say, both Chinese Americans and Chinese American literature will finally throw away their marginal image and to a certain extent step into mainstream of the multicultural American society.