Reconstruction Of Invented History And Reformation Of Traditional Culture

Chinese American literature is a key product of the clash and integration of Chinese and western culture. The Chinese culture serves as the source and motive for the Chinese American writing, therefore the issue of cultural study is the focus of the Chinese American literature research. This paper aims to make a dialectical and objective comment on the representation of Chinese culture in The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston.It is said that literary creation is not always the loyal presentation of the reality. The writers always represent the reality in their own ways. Maxine Hong Kingston correspondingly uses her own way to interpret the Chinese culture in her representative work The Woman Warrior. She holds an innovative attitude toward Chinese culture in the work. Misreading the characters in Chinese legends, Kingston remolds them that would be more accepting in American society, and indirectly promotes the development of Chinese culture and the integration of Chinese and American culture. While she inherits the ancestral culture, she criticizes mercilessly the negative sides of Chinese culture. However, it should be realized that Kingston's critique is less objective and complete because of her dilettante knowledge of Chinese culture from her parents. Her writing is full of the Chinese cultural codes and cultural hybrids between two kinds of cultures. In this case, the authenticity of the Chinese culture reflected in Kingston's work has been doubted by readers, which inevitably results in the endless debates from the critics.The paper consists of five parts. The introduction gives an overview of the development of Chinese American literature and the attitudes toward Chinese culture in different periods. The first chapter briefly introduces the biography of Kingston and summarizes The Woman Warrior and the various reviews on the cultural issue in this work. The second chapter deals with the misreading carried out in the work and sings highly of Kingston's creative representation of Chinese culture which finally develops the cultural conflicts into the cultural integration. The third chapter focuses on the writer's criticism on the negative sides of Chinese culture and points out that Kingston's criticism is subjective and mostly based on the American cultural core. The biased criticism and subjective revision of Chinese myths or legends inevitably invites the heated debate on the cultural authenticity in Kingston's work. Finally, the conclusion part summarizes Kingston's writing purpose. Kingston's success is based on Chinese culture and she, in return, develops Chinese American culture as the derivative of Chinese culture. It is also worth noting that Kingston, on the other side, develops the ethnic literature and makes it an indispensable part of the American literature.