Research On The Construction Of National Identity In Jing Yi's Works

This dissertation divides the Bai author Jingyi's literary writing path into three stages,and then analyze ethnic minorities' cultural identification presented in different stages.The three stages include the early short story creation stage,the mid-term reportage creation stage and the script creation stage.There are two basic reasons to do so,the first reason,obviously,is the writing genre.Secondly,the writing objects on which she focuses the most and the themes to which she pays most attention differs in each stages.Specifically speaking,in the first stage,she focuses on the cultural identity of Bai individuals under the conflicts between Bai tradition and modernity;in the second stage,however,she pays more attention on other minority ethnic groups,records the modernization of their traditional culture,economy and medicine,and represented them as "the brother of Han people" in the meantime;influenced by the dominant discourse "Unity Under Diversity",Jingyi's script The Ancient Tea Horse Road(Cha Ma Gu Dao)depicts the interaction between southwest minority ethnics and establishes their common identification:Chinese People.Scholars have paid more or less attention to the ethnic identities in Jingyi's writings,but they haven't systematically analyzed the presentation and construction of those diverse and meaningful identities.Therefore,this dissertation attempts to analyze ethnic minorities'cultural identity in Jingyi's wliterary works and the writing strategies Jingyi adopted to construct such identities.This dissertation contains three chapters.The first chapter elaborates the changes of writing objects and themes in Jingyi's three literary writing stages as mentioned above.Through narrative modes frequently used by Jingyi's,the "creation" mode and the "old man and boy" mode,and the depiction of female characters,this chapter argues that there exists continuity and connection throughout her literary writings,which was often neglected by other scholars.The second chapter would interpret three of Jingyi's short stories separately to demonstrate the diversity of cultural identity in her early writings.To be more specific,in the short story A Kite Flying above Erhai(Er Hai Piao Zhe Yi Zhi Feng Zheng),the protagonist,a Bai woman,gradually identified with Bai through a "third perspective",which belongs neither to the perspective of an out-comer nor to that of local Bai people.Ancient Tales and A Fourteen-year-old Boy(Gu Dai Chuan Shuo He Shi Si Sui De Nan Hai Zi),narrates how a Bai boy gets lost in the conflicts between traditional and modern culture and eventually finds his identity in a suspended harmonious state of tradition and modernity.In Oh!Subtropics(O! Ya Re Dai),taking Burma as "the other",a Bai driver obtain his national identity:Chinese People.The third chapter interprets both Jingyi's reportages and her script The Ancient Tea Horse Road(Cha Ma Gu Dao),illustrates how she use family affinity such as brotherhood and common historical memory as methods to construct minority ethnics' national identity.