The Chinese Story In The Western Context——On The Writing Of Chinese Culture In The Chinese American Literary Texts

Writing about Chinese culture has been an essential way of expressing the Chinese American sensibilities. Between the Chinese American literary expressions and the Chinese Americans stereotypes exists an inter-textural relationship of incessant confrontations. While the early utterance is designated as a polite refuting in the form of self-affirmation, the contemporary Chinese American literature emerging in the 60抯 and 70抯 of the last century is cleanly an open contention toward the mainstream racialism discourse, the best example of which is Maxine Hong Kingston抯 The Woman Warrior that is acclaimed to be a historical breakthrough for the development of the Chinese American literature. Maxine Hong Kingston抯 writing is marked by a lavish use of the Chinese cultural symbols. Her writing is also featured by cultural marginality. That is, she holds such a ground as to doubt and reject both the Chinese traditions and the American values, and at same time to demonstrate herself as an understanding negotiator between the two cultures. This has much to do with her cultural acceptance and the status of ~the otherness? Maxine Hong Kingston has created a unique narrative mode through her three creative works, in which the Chinese folklores or the classics are revised to a different extent for the purpose of interpreting the conscience and experience of the Chinese Americans as well as constructing a new image of Chinese American culture. Her pragmatic attitude toward Chinese culture is distinctly showed by her remolding the Chinese stories according to her ethnic and feministic mentality. The writing of the Chinese cultural elements inside the English literary works is obviously a cross-cultural practice, which forms a space for the cross-cultural dialogue between China and the West. Such writing can provide us a kind of paradigm of the Chinese culture presentation within the Western context. Chinese culture is a domain of cultural imagination by which the Chinese American authors employs as a most effective tool for boosting their ethnicity in the multiple-cultural environment. The Chinese American literature plays an experimental role in the communications between the Sino-West cultures. It may also serve as an exemplary case for the Chinese culture manifestation in the situations of the global isation.