The Perplexity Of Diaspora-on The Artistic Features In Pangs Of Love

With the upsurge of the globalization, diaspora has become a worldwide phenomenon. Consequently, a large number of diasporic writings and diasporic writers have emerged in recent decades. Diasporic writing and diasporic literature have aroused much attention of many scholars and theorists from both home and abroad, and have already become one of the heated subjects in the academic circle. Diasporic writers are usually in two or more cultural worlds, floating between ancestral culture and the residential one. Their dual identity endows them with unique perspectives. And in their works they depict the sense of loss and anxiety that immigrants have felt, explore the perplexity of identity that the diasporic have gone through and involuntarily show much concern for issues of cultural conflicts and integration. The survival experiences and cultural psychology of diaspora have been absolutely revealed in diasporic literature.David Wong Louie is a representative diasporic writer in Chinese American literature. Based on his own experiences of diaspora, his keen insight, and his excellent writing skills, He has produced many novels which describe the lives of those Chinese American immigrants in a foreign culture. Pangs of Love is the first successful works written by Louie, which has a favorable reception worldwide.The researches on the collection at home and abroad can be mainly divided into following parts:the ambiguity of the characters’identities, the relationship between male protagonists with white women, general introduction to David Wong Louie and his works, character analysis, the thematic analysis in terms of ethnicity and cultural conflicts.So far, there is almost no one who interprets the artistic techniques of the collection from diasporic perspective in order to explore overseas immigrants’living condition and their cultural identity. In this collection of eleven short stories, Louie focuses on Chinese Americans, describing their survival plight in a foreign land, exposing the clashes and conflicts, the loss, perplexity and choice of cultural identity they have confronted when wandering between different cultures and values. In this aspect of diaspora, the thesis attempts to explore the course of Chinese Americans’confusion of cultural identity in this collection through the use of artistic techniques and further probe into the profound theme with the help of the theory of symbolism, rhetoric, black humor, psychoanalysis and diasporic criticism.This thesis is composed of six parts:the first part is a brief introduction to David Wong Louie, his major works as well as a literature review on David Wong Louie from both home and abroad. The second part mainly discusses the survival state and the identity plight of Chinese Americans by means of diasporic focalization, illustrating their embarrassing situation and perplexity between traditional Chinese culture and American culture. The third part talks about symbolic significance of house and the surname Pang, signifying that Asian Americans wander aimlessly overseas just like rootless duckweeds and suffer from great agony caused by heterogeneous culture. The fourth part explores black humor and ridiculous allegory, which clearly states the characters’ alienation of mainstream culture and makes the readers laugh with tears. The fifth part analyses the characters’ psychological activities, conveying their psychological anxiety and wandering spirit. The last part aims at summarizing the thesis and highlighting the significance of the present research.