Analysis On Chinatown Narratives By Grassroots Writers Of Chinese Literature In The United States Of America

Grassroots writers constitute an important community of Chinese literature in America. They are writers who have been underprivileged after immigration and who have consequently focused their writings on the living conditions and emotions of disadvantaged Chinese immigrants. Among them rise some distinctive writers, such as Maurice Chuck(Huang Yunji), Ray YookWah Lau(Liu Huangtian), Laonan, Zongying, Liu Ziyi, etc. Their works are usually based on their authentic experience in Chinatowns of Los Angeles, New York City, and other cities, which bestow them with more realistic presentation of the overseas Chinese community than other writing groups. Thus, Chinatown narratives by grassroots writers are often praised for their unique values of revealing the real life of Chinese immigrants and for their enormous contributions to Chinese literature in America.Chinatowns are major habitations of the lower middle class and the underclass amongst Chinese immigrants. Accordingly, Chinatown narratives are based upon such communities. Thereamong, Bitter World(Ku She Hui), published in the late Qing dynasty, functions as a pioneer in describing the Chinatown. This novel is among the first which depicts living conditions of original coolies in Chinatown during the Chinese Exclusion Act period. Furthermore, grassroots writers inherit this creative tradition and adapt it to their own time and space: on the one hand, precedent immigrant novelists, such as Maurice Chuck, put their emphasis on the constantly changing society due to dynamic political conditions, and they also present immigrants’ emotional shift from restlessness to stableness, and from resistance to assimilation into the mainstream; on the other hand, contemporary immigrant writers are more concerned with secular lives of settled immigrants in the Chinatown. Their narrations of scenes and scenarios of life display the vicissitudes that the immigrants have gone through in different times.From Bitter World to grassroots writers, their works have been derive from their personal experience all along in order to record a vivid Chinatown. Grassroots writers inherit plenty of literary traditions from Bitter World, including depictions of the underclass among Chinese immigrants, the construction of the Chinese immigration history, and the truth of Golden Dream(the pursuit of gold). Moreover, they accommodate these traditions with different times and circumstances. Nevertheless, all grassroots writers, who share a common feature, lay emphasis on rectifying and reshaping the shadowed history and deformed reality through self-description. The uniqueness of Chinatown narratives by grassroots writers is reflected by this revelation.