Negotiating With The Past: Cultural Identity Transformation In Bone By Fae Myenne Ng

Bone, the debut of Chinese American woman writer Fae Myenne Ng, blends Chinese American history into the history of the Leong family:Grandpa Leong is a typical "bachelor", who immigrated into America as a coolie and died without having his dream of being sent back to China come true; the father Leon is a "bachelor" in transform, who came into America as a "paper son" of Grandpa Leong and could not fully get rid of his way of thinking as a bachelor even after he married; each of the Leong daughters suffers from cultural identification confusion. The formation of "bachelor society",the emerging of "paper son" chain immigration phenomenon and the cultural identification confusion encountered by the Leong daughters have a strong connection with the discriminated and excluded history of the Chinese Americans. The implementation of the Chinese Exclusion Act confines the Chinese Americans into physical jobs with longtime work and less pay. Though the Chinese Americans in Bone work hard, they still cannot make both ends meet. Life pressure arising from racism makes them suffer from unspeakable racial melancholy, which is passed on from generation to generation. Against the multicultural background, young Chinese Americans inherit unknown melancholy from their ancestors and begin to think about their identity, which provides possiblities of establishing a new identity for the Chinese Americans.This thesis will adopt the theories of postcolonial melancholia and postcolonial identity within the theoretical framework of postcolonialism to explore Chinese Americans' cultural identification transformation in Chinese American woman writer Fae Myenne Ng's debut Bone. This thesis insists that Chinese American history is buried or neglected by the mainstream society. For lack of the knowledge of their ancestors' contribution to the construction of America, young Chinese Americans cannot share the national pride with the mainstream society and cannot feel pride as a minority. By analyzing Bone, this thesis claims that Chinese Americans need to negotiate with their family past and restore their ethnic history; to accept two aspects of their cultural identity and establish a new cultural identity based on their bicultural background, which is the most effective solution to the identity confusion.