Contemporary Chinese American Writings Within The Context Of Multiculturalism

Since the 21st century, transformations in Chinese American literature can be significantly observed. While issues such as culture and ethnicity have been addressed owing to the 9/11 incident, which took place in the year of 2001, ideology of neoconservatism, as a multicultural antithesis, has taken the upper hand again. Under such social and historical context, discourses of multiculturalism can be explicitly embodied in various Chinese American writers as well as in their writings.Multiculturalism can be attributed to the Civil Rights Movement in 1950s and 1960s and the ideology has not drawn a wide range of attention in countries of immigrants such as the US, Canada, and Australia until 1990s. In academia, scholars have different views towards multiculturalism. There are critics who are concerned that multiculturalism will lead to social division and contradictions, while its supporters believe that it is conducive to recognizing the equal value of different cultures and protecting the rights of minority groups. In spite of the dispute, there is a consensus that cultural equality and cultural inclusion are what multiculturalism advocates. Therefore, the dissertation aims to examine how multiculturalism is engaged as a new perspective in Chinese American literature in the new millennium.Ha Jin, Amy Tan and Gish Jen are three significant and representative Chinese American writers. Looking back to their previous works, we can see that they have different perspectives on cultural issues. Ha Jin examines China from a perspective of immigrants; Amy Tan takes China and the US into consideration from an angle of cultural difference; and Gish Jen looks into China and the US in a multicultural way. At the beginning of the 21st century, they all get new books published, including both fictional and non-fictional. What is worth noticing is that all these newly published novels, which are different from their previous works, contain discourses of multiculturalism that assert cultural equality and cultural inclusion. As for their non-fictional works, not only do they signify a breakthrough in terms of literary genre, but also reflect their personal values and how they influence their literary works. Therefore, through scrutinizing those texts, which include both one fictional work and one non-fictional work by each writer, the dissertation is structured into various self-contained chapters and each chapter can be read consecutively in order to capture their literary transformation as well as the causes behind.The Introduction mainly contains the definition of multiculturalism, a literature review, at home and abroad, on the studies of Chinese American literature from the perspective of multiculturalism and a basic introduction of this dissertation.Chapter One focuses on Ha Jin’s A Free Life and The Writer as Migrant and it comes to the conclusion that his position between two languages, two cultures and two worlds gives him a unique perspective. His identity as a public intellectual renders him a writer who resists power and cultural hegemony. In A Free Life, Ha Jin writes an American story and focuses on the issues such as American Dream and social problems in the US. The Writer as Migrant, as the first non-fictional book together with A Free Life, interprets Ha Jin’s ideas on identity, language and homeland, which reflect his thinking on multiculturalism.Chapter Two concentrates on Amy Tan’s Saving Fish from Drowning and The Opposite of Fate:A Book of Musings and analyzes how her mother’s death, Lyme disease and the 9/11 incident give rise to the thematic change in her writings. Compared with her past novels, Saving Fish from Drowning suggests a breakthrough in two ways. On one hand, characters in the novel are of different ethnicities and sexual orientations, through which multicultural elements can be characterized; on the other hand, the novel narrates the complicity between the politics and the media. It vividly exemplifies Douglas Kellner’s theory of Media Spectacle. When it comes to her The Opposite of Fate:A Book of Musings, disease and death strike Tan with a different perception about life and sufferings; while the 9/11 incident inspires her to contemplate the subtle meanings and cultural implications behind sufferings.In Chapter Three, World and Town and Tiger Writing:Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self are studied in detail. World and Town can be called the first 9/11 novel in Chinese American literature. By employing Plato’s philosophical ideas and by appropriating Shakespeare’s King Lear, Jen reveals the causes of cultural hegemony and cultural negligence, which reflect her contemplation of multiculturalism, and exhibits her desire to be canonical. In her cultural essays, Jen, by means of comparative analyses, points out the cultural difference between the East and the West from the perspectives of literature, art and science, by which she is advocating the co-existence of different cultures.Through the studies, the dissertation concludes that in the 21st century, particularly after the 9/11 incident, writers start to pay more attention to multiculturalism and its discourses. Chinese American literature, as part of the global literature, begins to operate this ideology in its writings as well and plays a vital role as a discourse of resistance. It does not simply challenge cultural hegemony and cultural negligence, but also advocates an array of essential values in which cultural equality and cultural inclusion are asserted. All in all, in the post-9/11 era, the discourse of resistance is becoming more and more significant under the circumstance of neoconservatism and its negative impact on minority groups.