A Power Analysis Of Identity Hybridization In Wooden Fish Songs

Like forerunners such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan and Gish Jen,Ruthanne Lum Mc Cunn continues to use her pen to spin a blueprint for Chinese in the United States, and affects readers by her strong love for Chinese. In her detailed description, Chinese Americans are infused with positive spirits which are opposite to traditional images, such as dragon lady, Charlie Chan and fu manchu. Those Chinese Americans generate from Mc Cunn’s laborious search of history, and are embedded into her eight works.Unlike researches on feminism, narrative strategies and cultural difference, this thesis focuses on Lue Gim Gong from the perspective of cultural hybridity. With a text-based research and the usage of Michel Foucault’s “power discourse” and Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybridity, this thesis aims to discuss the issue of the hybridized identity in Ruthanne Lum Mc Cunn’s Wooden Fish Songs by the exploration of Lue Gim Gong’s ambivalent identity, and to reveal that with the globalization set in motion by imperialism cultural hybridization requires the continuum of history and the historical transformation.Lue Gim Gong suffers ethical identity crisis. He is excluded by his motherland through Sum Jui’s narration. Based on the three major features of Foucauldian Panopticon: collective, visible and unverifiable, this thesis attempts to figure out Gim Gong’s loss of ethical identity in China, including personal identity, family identity and clan identity. The layout will be made through Gim Gong’s three unfilial aspects:impotence of family line inheritance, ignorance of hometown, and intimacy with the powerful white.Lue Gim Gong is haunted by racial identity crisis as well. Racial issue has always been a shadow brooding over the minds of Chinese Americans, which could be reflected by the overwhelming white supremacy at that time. Based on the docile body of Foucauldian power, this thesis aims to analyze how the white distribute Chinese Americans in exclusive space, utilize their physical capacity, accumulate their time, and guard their authority by combinatory force of culture and politics.The ambivalence and the need to find his own identity, always accompany Lue.Cornered by Chinese culture and American culture, Lue suffers mental confusion.With the mirror of African Americans, Lue realizes the necessity of culture hybridity and sets off for the pursuit of a hybridized identity. His pursuit of a mixed marriage marks an endeavor for identity hybridization, and the success of a hybridized orange signifies the formation of Chinese American identity.A hybridized identity could be realized through cultural hybridization. An ideal hybridized identity should be the union of both mother culture and host culture.Through myriads of contradiction and negotiation, immigrant culture and host culture could find a third space in between, and realize the transformation of a hybridized identity.