David Henry Hwang's Family Devotions From The Perspective Of Diaspora Culture

Stuart Hall suggests"cultural identity"of a nation or an individual is unstable, dynamic and even contradictory, subject to the"play"of history, culture and power. Stuck in the western and Chinese cultures, the issue of Chinese Americans'identity is complicated, the historical, cultural, economic and political backgrounds should be taken into consideration when to make clear the identity of Chinese Americans. It's not an exception for Chinese Americans.The first and the second generation of Chinese Americans, characterized with distinctive feature of Diaspora, should be counted as one part of Diaspora ethnic, whereas, the third generation isn't in the same case. So to analyze the issue of Chinese Americans'identity from the perspective of Diaspora is a much easier way to see if Chinese Americans have been recognized by the American mainstream society or not, what a situation each generation of Chinese Americans is in and deepens the understanding of Chinese American writers'works mainly depicting the issue of identity to confirm Chinese American literature has been one essential part of American literature.David Henry Hwang, a prolific and prize-winning leading playwright in the present-time Chinese American drama, whose plays mainly describe the identity dilemma of Chinese Americans and what life they live physically and mentally in this dilemma. Family Devotions depicts how the three generations of Chinese Americans after World War II realized their identity: the first generation embraced the Christianity to gain recognition from the mainstream society, yet remaining their identity as Chinese; the second generation struggled for the recognition as Americans after they had made success economically and woken up by the Civil Rights Movement; finally, the third generation fulfilled self-construction of their identities.David Henry Hwang, through this play, drew pictures of what physical and mental life the three generations of post-war Chinese Americans had and how harsh and frustrating and disadvantageous treatment they received and thereby what they received from the mainstream society and what they did in trying to survive and obtain acceptance from the American society, all of which is a real miniature of the post-war Chinese Americans'life. What the playwright stressed most was the third generation's self-construction of their identity after they had pondered over the fact that their ancestor generations'being forced to conversion to the Christianity and stuck in the materialism: no matter what color their skin is and what race and ethnic they belong to, no matter where they are from, what they do in America, they are Americans and they are typical Americans, as long as they have thorough American thought and values. Therefore, they are not Diasporan ethnic anymore. Here, the playwright is representing his fellows with the similar or the same conditions to confirm their identity as Americans, which is the soundest voice they have since the 1850s when the earliest Chinese moved to America. It is revealed that the fluctuating state of Chinese Americans has much to with the economic, political, cultural and historical situations of the countries'which, most of the time, is unstable and ever changing.This thesis, through the analysis of Family Devotions, aims at suggesting how the cultural identities of the Chinese Americans in transform to the continuous changes of historical, cultural, economic and political powers, thus opposing the previous thought of the stability shown between the ethnics and identity and stressing the feature of fluidity, blend and diversity presented on the Chinese Americans.