The Reinscription Of The Representational Systems In Maxine Hong Kingston's Texts

In the preface of The Columbia Literary History of the United States, it is written that one prominent characteristics of the twentieth century is the flourish of family epic and ethnic literature. In the later half of the twentieth century, especially after the Civil Rights Movement, there has been the awakening of the minority group in the environment that encourages multiplicity of worldview and truth. Among the ethnic groups, the literature of Chinese Americans has enjoyed unprecedented attention, representing and contributing to the multi-cultural environment. Among the Chinese American writers, Maxine Hong Kingston is doubtlessly one of the most prominent, whose texts have been the most studied. The research in the past usually focuses on the feminist, Ethnographical and Anthropographical perspectives. In this dissertation, I examine the identity formation of the Chinese American males in the two books of Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men and Tripmaster Monkey: his fake book. My approach to her texts is interdisciplinary, drawing insight from post-modern and post-colonial theory, semiotics, studies in Oral Tradition and some related theories about movie, theater and photography. In particular, my reading of her works is informed by current postconolnial theory of looking at culture as representation systems.In defining the identity of Chinese American males, few contemporary critics have fully revealed the mechanism of the narration of nation in Kingston's texts. My dissertation seeks to fill this gap, thereby moving literary studies closer to the historical and cultural aspects of American minority women literature.Culture is a system of representation that can be constructed, contested and even undermined. Relating to Chinese American identity, I emphasize the necessity of tracing their history in the United States, so as to find a historical anchor. By appealing to the oral aspect of discourse, I see Kingston's employment of oral narrative techniques as a measure to give voice to the voiceless Chinese Americans, a loud one too that contests the written discourse of the mainstream. Kingston's penetration of the subtle layers of the visual and audio discourses of Chinese American stereotypes is also analyzed. By tracing the persistently detrimental effect of emasculation of Chinese American man, I attempt to analyze the counter strategy of community construction through theater. Chapter One analyzes China Men as an imaginative historical narrative with a special focus on Kingston's use of photograph - its subjectivity and its role in historical writing. Its subjectivity lies in the fact that the meaning of a photographic image is determined by verbal description and the context (Price, 1994 cited from Wells, 1996: 28). The nature of dual-codedness of photograph is analyzed in relation to China Men to reveal the demonization of Chinese Americans by the manipulation of the text and photos in mass media. The pre-arrangement of the photo-taking process is dissected to reveal the exclusion of Chinese Americans in the discourse construction that defined the meaning and legitimacy of American citizens. Finally, I analyze the equal status and significance the writer gives to personal photos in relation to the photos used in official discourses in the construction of family and ethnic history.Chapter Two looks into the relationship between movies and identity, and the ways in which the movies engage with key issues of identity formation. In particular, through analysis of the stereotypical image of Hop Sing that Wittman rages over, I intend to show the damaging effect the image has on the identity of Chinese Americans. Regarding the movie as a powerful medium for disseminating dominant ideals, I analyze the romantic relationship of the main character Wittman with Tana and reveal his definition of masculinity in relation to female characters in the novel. In particular, through analysis of the movies and its effect in blurring the virtuality and reality, it is contended that Wittman's marriage to Tana, the blonde who stands for the ideal of beauty, is the consequence of the identity forming pressure of the movie.Chapter Three analyzes the unique narrative technique in Kingston's works, with special focus on the influence from and the creative use of the narrative techniques in the Chinese oral tradition and vernacular story. Examples from China Men and Tripmaster Monkey are given to show how Kingston has combined the cooperative and emotional participation of oral tradition with the spatial and temporal possibilities of written literature, thus turning her works into memorable epic of Chinese Americans. It also explores the social and cultural roles that she plays in recording immigrant history and in the continuation, against a Western background, of the time-honored tradition of the Chinese oral narrative. The Chinese American identity was formed through the individual's relation with ethnical, cultural background and gender. Conscious employment of oral techniques is a way to connect with ancestors and fit into the broader framework. Thus, it is through her role as a writer that she comes to terms with the past. As a storyteller she ventures to imagine the past and becomes the bearer of the family and ethnical history. The dissertation offers an analysis of the craftsmanship of Kingston in manipulating language to incorporate disparate voices to incarnate her multicultural ideal. Influenced by the tradition of the Chinese oral performance, she uses onomatopoeia, writes sight dialect, and employs stock phrases used in the Chinese talk story to voice the sound and fury of Chinese Americans. In so doing, she transforms her book into a fluid, polyphonic, and vibrant performance of the once-silent Chinese Americans, and at the same time she transfers the vitality and vigor of the oral medium into novel writing, challenging the centralizing power of printed words.Chapter Four includes employment of unconventional theaters in Tripmaster Monkey and the journey Wittman takes to define his position in the community. His journey starts from the homage that he pays to Chinese storytelling tradition to the series of experiments on unconventional forms of theater and finally ends with community theater. Through the recreation of "Pear Garden in the West", Wittman intends to create a stage where multi-ethnic groups can be integrated, and their individual culture voiced. Through playing with characters, the site and the theatrical languages borrowed from his dual cultural background, Wittman finds a medium to express and define his identity and realizes his multicultural ideal. The culmination of his journey is the Chapter named "One Man Show" which gives him the chance for self-expression and also of communal rejuvenation.In conclusion, I highlight the effort Kingston makes to rehabilitate her Chinese forefathers through writing their contributions into the American history, to construct a parallel discourse that would contest the assimilative pressure from the mainstream discourse, and to give vivid and concrete refutations of racist and sexist stereotypes. By depicting the complex and diversified Chinese American experience, she makes it difficult for the official discourse to sustain its unidimenisnal view of Chinese Americans.The critical study of Chinese American Literature and especially of Kingston's work has been a focal point both at home and abroad. New ground needs to be broken. We need to consider the cultural, social and historical aspect of text, and at the same time take the text as literary work for its literary value. My project has drawn from discourse theories from postcolonialism, narrative theory, movie, photography and theater study, encompassing ideas from history, ideology, culture and subculture. The analysis is focused on the counter-discourse constructed in Kingston's work, highlighting the efforts that she has made to construct a discourse which helps us adopt a truer perspective regarding the identity forming process of Chinese Americans. Hopefully, my interdisciplinary study will shed some new light on a better understanding of the work of Maxine Hong Kingston.