On The Images Of China In Chinese American Narrative Texts Written In English

This dissertation has conducted an imagologie study over the evolving images of China presented in the Chinese American narrative texts written in English, and analyzes how they have been formed in different political and historical environments, and how they reflect the cultural identity of the Chinese American writers, with the comparison of the images of China in mainstream American literature. Different from the images of China imagined and created by white American writers, those presented by the Chinese American writers are a unique integration of "self-molded image" and "foreign image" with a perspective of an "insider". Owing to the differences of the writers' personal experiences and historical backgrounds, these images can fit into four major categories: "the Chinese social reality" in the light of the western civilization and "the cultural utopia" created by the early Chinese American writers, "the patriarchal Chinese society" and "the visionary Chinese utopia" in traditional Chinese legions and fables created by the second-generation Chinese American writers. These images of China full of diversity and mobility simultaneously reflect the diversity, mobility and open-endedness of the writers' cultural identity, and so refute the belief in essentialist identity of Asian American literature criticism, and at the same time echo the views on multi-cultural identity and diasporic identity advocated by some Asian American scholars. This study will in a way lend a perspective to the study of diasporic literature in the context of "globalization".