A Study Of Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You As A Bildungsroman

Celeste Ng(1980-),a post-80 s Chinese American female writer,spent six years writing her debut novel Everything I Never Told You,which is one of The New York Times list of 100 Notable Books of 2014 and the Amazon book of 2014,the winner of the American Library Association’s Alex Award and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Fiction,and named the best book of the year by more than a dozen publications.The charm of Everything I Never Told You lies in two respects: firstly,it delicately intertwines the theme of alienation,achievement,race,gender,family,and identity within the tales of a single family;secondly,it unfolds within a Chinese American family in the 1970 s,exploring how hard it is for a child to grow up when suffering from the pain of misplaced parental love and serious racial discrimination in his/her childhood.This paper adopts trauma theory,identity theory and Bildungsroman theory to explore the nuanced aspects of Everything I Never Told You as a Bildungsroman.On one hand,Lydia’s growth can be examined from following three respects: plot patterns and the dramatization of Lydia’s growth,dynamic changes of Lydia’s contrasting character traits,and initiation mentors in Lydia’s growth,especially Lydia’s psychological growth and the awakening of her self-awareness;it can be seen that the novel features the typical elements of traditional Bildungsroman.On the other hand,the novel differs from classical Bildungsroman.First of all,as a contemporary Bildungsroman,it ends with openness and uncertainty rather than closeness and singularity.Until now,the reason for Lydia’s suicide has triggered readers’ and scholars’ various explanations.Moreover,Everything I Never Told You,like most contemporary Bildungsroman,ends up with tragedy,whose protagonist,instead of compromising with the reality and ends up with happiness,dies on the threshold of the adult world.Celeste Ng and Everything I Never Told You,to the best of our knowledge,remain largely unexplored.Observing the generic features of the novel can not only shed light on the contemporary development of this classic genre,but more importantly,illuminate how contemporary ethnic writers like Celeste Ng exploit the genre to address the complex issues that confront Chinese American families and minority interracial families amid the accelerating transformations of social-cultural values.