A Study On Hong Ying’s Novel From The Perspective Of Identity

Hong Ying is one of the several Chinese-British writers who have opened the reading circle of the overseas and she is also one of the representatives of the Chinese contemporary feminist literary. Her works are mainly novels, with a strong and distinctive female consciousness, represented by "Daughter of the River", "Good Children of the Flowers", "The K-United Kingdom’s Lover" and "Shanghai Trilogy" (including "The King of Shanghai", "Shanghai Magic" and "Shanghai’s Death") etc. Her masterpieces have been translated into more than 30 languages and have been published in Europe, America, Australia, Israel, South Korea and some other places. These works won wide attention and recognition at home and abroad. For example, in 1997, Hong Ying’s long autobiographical novel "Daughter of the River" won Taiwan’s The Best of Scholars by the United Daily News; in 2000, Hong Ying was honored as one of the top ten popular writers by the mainland media; Hong Ying was even named as the Hero of the Women by Chinese Book Business in 2001, ranking first in the top ten female writers; "The K-United Kingdom’s Lover" was awarded the Books of the Year by the British newspaper INDEPENDET; Hong Yong, in 2005, won the "Rome Prize for Literature" that was regarded as the Oscar of Literature in Italian; in 2009, her "Good Children of the Flowers" was honored as the second in the top ten novels of the worldwide ranking by Asia Weekly and so on.It is well known that Hong Ying has special life experience, particular behavior, and multidimensional identity. She gave birth to an illegitimate daughter and she was born poorly and raised in troubled times. She left home since she was 18-year-old, then wrote novels freely, read books, had relationships, immigrated to overseas, and received not only awards but lawsuits. Hong Ying had ups and downs and amazing stories through her whole life. Her self-identity is also a changing process. Embodied as a consciousness, self-awareness is also an open expression of the body carnival. A writer’s self-consciousness has the indelible mark of identity and is embodied in her own works naturally.This thesis takes the prominent characteristics of identity as the research object, starts from the Identity Theory, and mainly focuses on the edge identity, the diaspora identity and the artistic expressions from the perspective of identity in Hong Ying’s novels. This thesis aims to give a thorough research on her writing identity under the situation of being the "other" and to make a deep analysis of her identities under different cultural conflicts. This thesis also tries to expound the internal causes of how Hong Ying highlights the marginal figures, the diasporic identity and her self-identity under her unique narrative expression, so as to thoroughly analyze the systematic process of the identity building of Hong Ying’s novels.