Where Is Home:a Study Of Ida Pruitt,Pearl S.Buck,and Jean Fritz's Writings On Chinese Childhood And Identity

In the late 20th century,with the popularity of postmodernism and postcolonism,the issue of identification has become a core concept in Western cultural studies and aroused tremendous interest in humanities.Within this interest,the identification issue caused by intercultural and inter-racial transportation and related writing,has been one of the foci in literature research.Different from the study on those writers and their writings who migrated from the third world to the first world,this dissertation mainly touches upon those western writers with third world childhood experience.Drawing theories and knowledge from the fields such as history,literature,society,and cultural studies,this dissertation tries to analyze some literature texts written by three American writers who shared Chinese childhood experience:Ida Pruitt,Pearl S.Buck,and Jean Fritz.Via this way,it aims to conduct an analysis on their complicated identity issue,and the relationship between it and their special childhood experience.Moreover,this dissertation also tries to interpret some characteristics of Missionary Kids and the broader group Third Culture Kids,and study the ways of representation and construction of identity in such text forms as autobiography,biography and fiction.These three missionary daughters were raised in China and then returned to America when they grew up,so just like other third culture kids,their identification has shifted or mingled.Hence,they have to be confronted with a series of identification crises and would make some efforts on identity seeking and construction.As writers,all of these will be displayed in their literature texts.Ida Pruitt's A Daughter of Han,Madam Yin and A China Childhood conveyed her strong identification with traditional Chinese culture and some confusion and contradicts by biographical writing on others' lives and autobiographical writings on her own Chinese childhood.As a Nobel Prize winner,Pearl S.Buck's East Wind,East Wind,A Divided House,and My Several Worlds,written in her initial,climax and late period,all contains rich information in her identification route:East Wind,West Wind displayed fully the contradiction among different elements in Pearl's early identification;Divided House,the last in the trilogy The Good Earth,conveyed various aspects as a stranger;the autobiography My Several Worlds constructed the image of a world citizen,so went beyond such narrow concepts as home and nationality,which confused the group of third culture kids,and obtained a conversion of identity.Jean Fritz,a children literature writer,in her autobiography Homecoming:My Own Story described a kind of traumatic experience in the narration of her Chinese childhood experience.In the fiction The Cabin Faced est,Jean traced a part of her family history,in so doing she attempted to render her childhood some meaning and make an explanation for her identification problems and childhood experience.The other autobiography China Homecoming mainly described her experience of going back to China in her late years.In this book,Jean tried to get rid of the tag of "little foreign devil" attached to her when she was young,prove herself as a friend of Chinese,and achieve another kind of return for her identity.Based on the thorough analysis of the above texts,the dissertation points out that,the attention for these writers with the background of third-culture-kids experience,will be conducive to get closer to some covered-up or marginalized groups,and undo some enigma in literature writing.Therefore,the research will deepen the understanding of such kind of writers and their works,and enrich the identification research in literature field.