A Quest For “the Promised Land” By Ethnic Minorities In Mona In The Promised Land

Gish Jen, a Chinese American writer, is good at creating works about ethnic relationship under the background of multiculturalism. Up to now, by combining with her completely different life experiences and feelings, she has created several works that contain characters of various ethnic backgrounds. Mona in the Promised Land epitomizes the exploration of ethnic relationship. It presents the racial environment of the Asian American(especially the C hinese American), the Jewish American and the African American in the period of C ivil Rights Movement, and reflects the racial prejudice in ethnic groups. It also expresses each ethnic minority’s quest for “the promised land” where genuine freedom, equality and justice are advocated.Racial prejudice is an intrinsic phenomenon of mankind, which exists in every member, group, society and nation since the birth of human beings. It is different from the racial discrimination. The former is an attitude while the la tter is a behavior. Therefore, racial prejudice may not lead to discrimination, but the behavior of discrimination is the result of racial prejudice. As a social psychological phenomenon, racial prejudice greatly influences the interpersonal communication, especially the communication of the ethnic groups. Therefore, with the concept of racial prejudice, this thesis analyzes the ways of dealing with racial prejudice adopted by each ethnic group, and illustrates that multiculturalism is not a solution to eliminate racial prejudice. Besides, it also reveals that only by adopting joint efforts to renounce the deep-rooted biases and misunderstanding can the groups go beyond racial prejudice, produce positive results of improving the ethnic relationship, and ultimately bring about the understanding and mingling of these ethnic groups.From the dimension of racial prejudice, this thesis analyzes the process of overcoming racial prejudice and the quest for “the promised land ” of each ethnic minority. The introduction presents the literary review and the concept of racial prejudice. Then, by combining with the novel, it represents the struggling, trial and expectation of each ethnic group briefly. Chapter one analyzes the responses of the main characters in Scarshill to racial prejudice. Apart from suffering racial prejudice from the white, the ethnic minorities also express their various degrees of racial prejudice or their ethnic snobbery to other groups. Thus, they are forced to deal with racial prejudice in various ways, such as switching identity to search for acceptance, hiding diasporic origin from persecution and building a mental segregation against injustice. However, these ways have nothing to do with their situation. Finally, it has no use to solve the racial issues and to flourish the ethnic culture. Chapter two elaborates the trying of multiculturalism in Camp Gugelstein. Since those ways that they have adopted cannot free the ethnic characters from racial prejudice, these oppressed people try to put their prejudice aside and to establish a multicultural community named Camp Gugelstein. It is a rosy prospect for ethnic relationship and cultural diversity. As an ideal model of multiculturalism, Camp Gugelstein contains people from different races and cultures, and endows them with equality. It seems that each ethnic character lives in a house with no walls between the rooms. However, Camp Gugelstein collapses with a silver flask missing, which suggests the precariousness of pan-ethnic efforts and the tenacity of racist attitudes. Actually, it reflects the incompleteness of multiculturalism. C hapter three anticipates the new life which symbolizes freedom, equality and justice for each ethnic minority in the promised land. The collapse of Camp Gugelstein like a double-edged sword, undermines the ethnic relationship temporarily, but even uncovers the latent racial prejudice. It promotes their self-knowledge and great changes, and help s them to gain freedom, equality and justice.In the conclusion, this thesis concludes that the quest for “the promised land ” is also the process of overcoming racial prejudice which shows the complexities of ethnic relationship and the difficulties in solving racial issues. The complications of the ethnic relationship test the validity of democracy of the United States. That is to say, the quality of ethnic relationship mainly depends on the validity of democracy in the country.