A Study Of Chinese Americnan Women’s Identity Construction Models In Bone

Fae Myenne Ng is one of the noted Chinese American novelists after Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, and others. Her debut novel, Bone came into publication in1993and it has received great attention in academic circles and high praise from readers. Like many other Chinese American fiction and immigrant works, Bone represents a vivid portrait of life in Chinatown, and the identity crisis caused by the cultural conflicts for the second-generation Chinese American daughters and their different ways of establishing women selfhood.This thesis, based on the comprehensive researches on Bone, intends to apply Homi Bhabha’s theory of cultural translation, diaspora, and feminist theory to analyze the three different models each daughter used to establish their female identity by means of culture translation, establishing fluid identity in diaspora, and the deconstruction of gender differences. Firstly, from the perspective of feminist theory, the thesis argues about Ona’s resistance against the patriarchy with her death to obtain her woman subjectivity in Bone. Secondly, based on the postcolonial theory, it contends that constant migrations of Nina between different cultures destruct the binary opposites between the American culture and the Chinese culture, and thus enable Nina to confirm a Chinese American with a fluid identity in the "Third Space." Lastly, it applies Bhabha’s post-colonial theory of culture translation to demonstrate that Leila, the protagonist in Bone, translates and negotiates between the conflicting cultures in the "Third Space"; thus, she deconstructs the binary opposites of the two cultures and the agony of self-split, and consequently constructs her Chinese American woman subjective identity in this negotiable and translational space.By discussing the identity construction models of the second-generation Chinese American women, the thesis aims to explore the validity of the culture translation, constructing fluid identity in diapora, and the deconstruction of the gender binary opposites in establishing their women subjective selfhood for ethnic minority women. My thesis demonstrates the different routes of identity construction, and clarifies the process of establishing Chinese American women identity in the "Third Space." As is contended, my discussion on the identity construction models of Ng’s Bone, in a tentative way, provides the ethnic minority women in America with an inspiration to dispel the binary opposites of the cultures and genders and consequently establish their women subjective identity in the "Third Space.’...