Ethnicity And Beyond

Although Chinese immigrants have been in Canada for more than one hundred and fifty years, they made few literary achievements in the first one hundred years in Canada. Apart from the language obstacle, it was mainly because Chinese-Canadians were prejudiced against and isolated by the mainstream White society. The first East-Asian literary anthology published in Canada-Inalienable Rice:A Chinese&Japanese Canadian Anthology-did not appear until1979, and it was then that Chinese-Canadian literature in English began to make its voices heard. A group of outstanding Chinese-Canadian writers began to emerge on the Canadian literary arena around the1990s, and they include Paul Yee, Sky Lee, Wayson Choy, Fred Wah and Marty Chan. Their works have won many important Canadian literary awards including the Governor General’s Award, and have made no small impact on the mainstream society.This dissertation attempts to take "ethnicity" as the starting point, using postcolonial theory as the major theoretical basis and drawing extensively on postmodernism, cultural studies, feminist criticism and narrative theory to explore how "ethnicity" is represented in contemporary Chinese-Canadian literature in English from three aspects:constructing history of Chinese-Canadians, pursuing Chinese-Canadian identity, and rethinking of Chinese cultural traditions transplanted to North America. The ethnic characteristics make the literary works created by some Chinese-Canadian writers stand out from the mainstream literature, and enable the voices of Chinese-Canadians to be better heard. In the meantime, some Chinese-Canadian writers have also gone beyond ethnicity in the theme of their works and made bold attempts at formal innovations, so that they have consciously or subconsciously avoided falling into the pitfall of national essentialism.The author of this dissertation argues that as ethnic literature, neither the ethnic aspect nor the literary aspect of Chinese-Canadian literature in English should be ignored. Taking the two as a focus, this dissertation endeavors to justify that contemporary Chinese-Canadian literature in English not only helps Chinese immigrants and their descendants to articulate their voices in the mainstream, but also demonstrates its literary value.