Construction And Deconstruction Of Orientalism

The Chinese American literature is a history of colonization, post-colonization, assimilation and anti-colonization, which touches upon the themes discussing the multiple issues challenging the peripheral ethnic groups, such as, the assimilation in the mainstream society, interaction between generations who accepted the dominant culture and their parents, culture and gender identities, which therefore is the integrated part of literature studies. So far, apart from the early description of Chinese Americans by the mainstream white society, the Chinese American literature is divided into six parts:early Asian immigrant writers, the second-generation self-portrait, portraits of Chinatown, searching for a new self-image and multiple mirrors and many images. By analyzing the related characters in the three works written by the Chinese American authors, the thesis focuses on the analysis on the three stages of stereotyping Chinese Americans, namely the construction, internalization and deconstruction of the Chinese American stereotypes. Firstly, it introduces the Chinese American stereotypes in the western literature, media and other mainstream discourse, namely the stereotypes in four aspects of gender, race, nation and society. Then, by illustrating the father and son’s experience of assimilation in the American society in Pardee Lowe’s Father and Glorious Descendant, it discusses how the Chinese Americans have internalized the stereotypes in the social background that Americans treated Chinese Americans as the model minority, namely, denying their Chinese identity and totally accepting the western way of life. Such internalization is the converse reflection of the fact that the west imposes requirements of appearance, daily life habits and other outer stereotypes on the easterners. That is to say, the second generation immigrants imitate the American way of life, language and everything that is American so as to be accepted by the Americans. Yet, such a denial on one’s own racial identity still will not win the acceptance of America. In Father and Glorious Descendant, the son who has graduated from a prestigious American university cannot find a job in the Whites’s companies and has to accept a position related to China issue studies, which indicates that he is not accepted by the American mainstream society and still remains different from the natives. Moreover, in Frank Chin’s Gunga Din Highway the male Chinese American author attempts to utilize traditional Chinese stories and characters to reestablish a Chinese male heroic system. However, although he opposes the western dominating society’s intention of feminizing Chinese American males, he has internalized the American thinking pattern and even the negative sides of it, such as the ideology of the male dominant society, worshiping wars, individual heroism, etc. Meanwhile, he has misinterpreted the cultural connotation of traditional Chinese stories and characters. Therefore, although Frank Chin has contributed in opposing stereotypes, he has internalized the western ideology, which can be evidenced by the adaptation of traditional Chinese characters and plots into the western mythologies and characters in their essence. Thus, via the features, the thesis analyzes the second stage in internalization, namely the internalization of the western dominant culture. Lastly, the thesis focuses on illustrating M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang who attempts on deconstructing Orientalism by the gender inversion and the inversion between the east and the west to disclose the inventive nature of stereotypes to deconstruct the center status of the west. Furthermore, the thesis advocates the function of narcissism in deconstructing the western hegemonic discourse. Due to the fact that the west relies too much on and believe its powerful status as a gazer, it is so fascinated with the false sense of superiority that it is incapable of understanding the real situation, which leads to the deprivation of its dominate position in discourse and therefore deconstructs the western hegemonic discourse.