Narrative Subversion And The Construction Of Chinese American Identity In Third Space

Chinese Americans, much as other ethnic minorities in America, are sandwichedbetween two worlds, suffering from the cultural conflicts, the racial discrimination andthe stereotypes that gradually construct them as the Other. In this context, seeking andconstructing the identity of Chinese Americans become the primary concern of ChineseAmerican literature. However, in their search for identity, Chinese American writers aretrapped in the dilemma between American and Chinese traditional culture, wobbled withcontentions between heroism and feminism, and caught up in the plight between theethnic psyche and the mainstream ideological fashioning. As a postcolonialist, well awareof the ethnic writers' dilemma and anxiety, Hommi Bhabha addresses these issues in histheoretical formulations. His theories of Third Space, hybridity and cultural translation, inparticular shed much light on the issue of identity construction for ethnic writers.Maxine Hong Kingston, one of the most influential Chinese American writers, withher distinctive and groundbreaking literary creations, becomes the woman warriorfighting for the construction of Chinese American identity. Tripmaster Monkey: His FakeBook (1989), her first novel, speaks for her effort at creative and nuanced explorations onthe issues of identity. From the postcolonial perspective, the novel seems to aim atcreating a Bhabhaian Third Space where, by the strategy of hybridity and culturaltranslation, stereotypes about the Chinese American are resisted and broken, anessentialized authenticity over the self are collapsed, and new Chinese Americanidentities are constructed. Therefore, this dissertation aims to employ Homi Bhabha'spostcolonial theory to analyze Kingston's fictional explorations on the issues of theChinese American identity, the construction of Chinese American community and theapproach to bridge the gender gap. Drawing from the insights of Bhabha's theory tointerpret Tripmaster Monkey, the dissertation seeks, hopefully, to open up new horizonsfor discussions on the identity construction of Chinese Americans in the Global Age.