Marginal Writing And Cultural Identity

Since the Opium War, Chinese intellectuals have been seeking effective way to revitalize the Chinese nation, and to realize prosperous country with a powerful army. How to make it? There were no good choices but to learn from the West at that time. Many students who had been sent to oversea to study in succession since the end of Qing dynasty, had been always playing the roles of pioneers and media, during the period of westernizing in modern and contemporary Chinese literature and thought. Furthermore, the oversea Chinese, including students studying abroad and emigrants, were the propelling power to change China in the process of China modernization in fact. Thus the Chinese oversea in creative writing had been playing a vital role.The achievement of the North American Chinese literature, the important branch of the Chinese literature, is shown by novels. Wang Der-wei argues that the unique experience of overseas Chinese literature can become the core target of Chinese cultural modernization, so it is no surprise that the important field of contemporary Chinese novels lies in abroad, it’s true. There were comparatively complete records in the north American Chinese literature, including the correspondence and complement of culture, the course of collision, communication and interaction between China from the third world and north America from the first world. The experiences of records indicate China modernization destiny in the globalization era and the development trend of our national culture in the structure of world culture.This paper is to aim at studying consistency of North American literature in time and space aspects in recently century. In order to discover the fate of Chinese contemporary culture and the interrelation between Chinese traditional culture and west culture during the process of modernization. In the viewpoint of the vision of intercultural communication, the writers of North American Chinese are obvious in the double marginal fields. On their writing, it becomes a kind of transnational marginal writing, which is a kind of extension from motherland, not only on geography or territory but also on culture and psychology. Though North American Chinese are in the marginal area and cultural activity spaces between the east and the west, it is the main reason for their special spaces of culture creative and literature writing. Thus, in the context of cultural globalization, North American Chinese literature on intercultural and transnational turns into migrant literature or scatteration literature, which is one of the most typical subjects. In view of the richness, complexity and versatility, North American Chinese literature is studied, according to the related academic issues, including culture recognition, interaction, transnational, exile, city consciousness, gender and culture, etc., to explain the main features of culture, the process and trend of contemporary Chinese culture, and to consider the fate of culture of all human being.Above are the main content and viewpoints of the preface and the conclusion. The body of this thesis is divided into six parts to discuss the specific from different angles.In Chapter2, the marginal status and the complexity and diversity of the culture mentality of Chinese oversea intellectuals are analyzed from their spirit in20th century, the complexity and diversity of the culture mentality of intellectuals depends on their various cultural attitudes toward the west culture. In fact, there are several levels in North American Chinese writers, including culture self-confidence persons, Grassroots writers, Chinese oversea students writers, new migrant writers, new century cultural transcendence writers, and so on. It’s necessary to analyze the culture mentalities of these writers in different stages by the method of generation comparison.In chapter3and chapter4, due to the long span of north American literature creation and the wide range of subjects, the main objects of study are expended into two aspects, the one is the description regarding their living status of the Chinese migrants in abroad, and the other is regarding their desire for motherland and identity of culture rebuilding. In the articles of Chinese oversea students, after a short culture shock, more and more culture mentality characters are reflected as the great China shadow and indecisive dilemma in the image of different contexts and embracement of west civilization impacts. North American Chinese writing in Chinese is a method for oversea Chinese to resist forgetting, and to keep memory, a status of North American Chinese and description of motherland in Chinese. Through writing in Chinese, oversea Chinese literature writers have been not only building their culture identities successfully, but also explaining their comprehension and recognition of Chinese culture identities, providing spiritual resources to be shared for Chinese culture identities to be built.In chapter5and chapter6, gender expression and recognition crisis are discussed according to the following two aspects,"disgrace anxiety" and recognition from male aspect, and several dilemmas and recognition from female aspect. Under the context of west, once the male’s identities value system in Chinese politics and public culture fields is destroyed, it will lead to male’s disgrace anxiety and culture recognition. In the atmosphere of west culture, genders and races discrimination are mingled together, leading to female’s survival dilemmas. Oversea Chinese writing is about writers’ choices and culture identities recognition. This gender description of North American Chinese literature displays the self-deconstruction relation between oversea Chinese literature gender and body tangle, so the male and the female of oversea Chinese should be staunch behaviorists in the process of the culture identities construction.In chapter7, the internal relations of the city writing and culture recognition are discussed specially. North American Chinese literature starts a new dimension on literature and city research:literature vision of city express fate change and true mind. Oversea Chinese, as marginal persons of metropolis and the other of abroad city in post-industry age of North American, represents change of city images from objectivity to subjectivity. The expression of city consciousness and city desires space are the mentality mirror images of dilemmas of marginal persons’survive and culture from oversea Chinese.