Wishes From Another Shore: From Conflicting Dualism To Harmonious Pluralism

In recent decades ethnic literature has become so thriving in America that it has added great vigor and vitality to the American literature. Chinese American literature, like a new star, has shone more brightly than the other ethnic literatures. In this thesis I would like to make a study of some well-known and representative Chinese American women writers and their works. The study will be done from the feminist perspective and with the help of cultural criticism. On basis of this, a fair and objective conclusion might be drawn about their contributions and limitations.This thesis consists of the following parts:Chapter One reviews the formation and development of Chinese American women literature. In the 1940s, Jade Snow Wong had her first autobiography The Fifth Chinese Daughter published, which marked the beginning of Chinese American women literature. Then in the 1970s another Chinese woman writer, Maxine Hong Kingston, published her novels The Woman Warrior and Chinaman, which pushed the Chinese American literature into a new era. In the 1990s, the climax arrived with the publication of Amy Tan's several novels including The Joy Luck Club. These writers have laid a strong foundation for the development of the whole Chinese American literature.Chapter Two examines the representative works of the three Chinese American women writers from the feminist perspective. With careful reading and analyses, this author points out that these writers describe elaborately the living conditions of some of the immigrant Chinese women known to them and that the victimized women characters in the novels are the real portraiture of Chinese immigrant women in the past. These writers, who live between the two cultural worlds and who have witnessed the history of the Chinese immigrants, pay special attention to and have great sympathy for the difficult life of the Chinese women. Hence it is not difficult to detect the strong connection between the Chinese American women literature and feminist theories.Chapter Three concentrates on the complicated conflicts between mothers and daughters in the three women writers' works. From mothers one can see the Chinese traditional values such as hierarchy and success through study, while from daughters one...