Reconstruction Out Of Deconstruction

Since the publication in 1976, Maxine Hong Kinston's first book The Woman Warrior has received enormous attention from a wide variety of circles. At the reception of her Presidential Humanities Medal in 1997, American ex-President Clinton said,"In her ground-breaking book The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Childhood Among Ghosts, she brought the Asian-American experience to life for millions of readers and inspired a new generation of writers to make their own unique voices and experiences heard."As the book is rich in content, there are almost as many interpretations as there are critics.This thesis reexamines the book from the viewpoints of deconstruction, reader response and cultural studies, analyzing such postmodern techniques as pastiche (collage) and parody used in it to highlight the narrator's quest for a new Chinese American female identity. In doing so it draws attention to Kingston's intention of sharing the feeling of estrangement and her desire to bridge the gap between alienated individuals through communication.The thesis is composed of five parts. The introduction emphasizes the importance of Maxine Hong Kingston in American literature, briefly surveys the critical scholarship and then explains the purpose of the current thesis. Part II is divided into two sections -- a brief account of The Woman Warrior and a discussion of postmodernism, on which the thesis is based. Part III demonstrates how the projected Chinese-American female image and that of the stereotypical immigrant are both deconstructed through juxtaposition of imagination and reality as well as of Chinese vs. American traditions with the help of pastiche or collage. Part VI reveals how a new image of Chinese-American female is established by way of storytelling to break the stifling silence. Finally the conclusion summarizes the contribution of this thesis in reinterpreting Kingston's deconstructive approach and calls attention to Kingston'intention of bridging the cultural gaps through storytelling.