Carnivalization In Tripmaster Monkey:His Fake Book

Maxine Hong Kingston(1940-)is one of the most influential contemporary Chinese American writers.She has won some of the top literary awards in America for her unique perspectives and writing style.Many of her works focus on Chinese Americans‘ suffering and struggle of establishing identity in the mainstream society,featuring Chinese oral tradition of talk-stories,Chinese and western classics.With dizzying postmodern artistic techniques and black humor,Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book(1989),is Kingston‘s most experimental and sophisticated novel.It portrays a young Chinese American poet,Wittman A Sing,who endeavors to create a community and affirm his Chinese American identity by reviving theatre which embodies both Chinese and American,popular and classical culture.Setting in 1960 s San Francisco,Tripmaster Monkey constructs a carnivalized world where racial stereotypes of Chinese Americans are deconstructed and racist America is subverted.This thesis is intended to explore the function of carnivalization and humor in Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book in order to find out how carnivalization offers a humorous resistance to the ethnocentric tradition in America and helps to confirm the protagonist‘s Chinese American identity.The analysis concentrates on three aspects: carnivalistic acts of crowning and decrowning;parody inherited from the humorous form in medieval carnival;carnivalistic characterization in which the trickster figure will be analyzed in particular.Firstly,rituals of crowning and decrowning are probed in four typical events that successively take place in parade,the toy department,the theatre and the wedding ceremony.In these events,Chinese Americans crown themselves by decrowning racist whites and the established order.With playfulness and laughter,equality is thereby made possible.Secondly,Kingston‘s use of parody is discussed based on Baktin‘s and Hutcheon‘s explanation of the essence of parody,which regards parody as a technique of humor that sets people free from the official ideology.The employment of parody in the novel aims at bridging Chinese culture with western culture to shape Chinese Americans‘ identity.Since Kingston parodies both Chinese and western classics,the chapter is further divided into two parts accordingly.Lastly,carnivalistic characters,especially Wittman Ah Sing the trickster,is examined to illustrate how Ah Sing‘s trickeries help him bust through the simplified cliché of Chinese Americans and establish his identity.Based on these analyses,the thesis concludes that with assistance of carnivalization and humor,Kingston manages to create a Utopia for all characters to escape from racist America and all cultures to coexist harmoniously.And three discoveries have been made: First,carnivalization and humor are mighty weapons for Chinese Americans to reverse power and order,mock at the supposed superior group and redefine identity.Second,humorous forms in carnival have the function of breaking limiting culture narrative of Chinese Americans.Particularly notable in this regard is parody.Third,dwelling upon multi-culture,the trickster has the ability to wrestle with his identity as a minority.Therefore,trickster is a powerful tool for ethnic writers to apply when it comes to the issue of identity construction.Being a trickster herself,Kingston celebrates Chinese American subjectivity in her writing while gaining a position in the canon of American literature.