Constructing A Harmonious Third Space

As an outstanding Chinese Canadian writer. Wayson Choy is famous for his fiction The Jade Peony. He won the 1995 City of Vancouver Book Award, and the 1995 Trillium Prize. The fiction was awarded as an American Literary Association Notable Book of the Year in 1998, and was selected by the Literary Review of Canada as one of the "100 Most Important Books in Canadian History (1945-2004)" in 2005. The Jade Peony represents the rapid development of Chinese Canadian Literature in the 1990s. It is considered as a typical Chinese Canadian English literary work in features of its documentary writing style, its centralized narration of Chinese Canadians, and its representation of cultural hybridity. The Jade Peony possesses great research value and potential.From the perspective of postcolonial study, especially based on the theory of the third space which is advocated by the postcolonialist Homi Bhabha, this thesis discusses that Wayson Choy attempts to construct a harmonious third space in The Jade Peony, aiming to break the stereotype of Chinese Canadians; to eliminate the confusions of "'Who I am" and"Where I come from;" to encourage Chinese Canadians enunciate, and to construct the Chinese Canadians'own cultural identity space.This thesis explores how Wayson Choy has constructed a harmonious third space in The Jade Peony, illustrating Chinese Canadians writers'efforts for demonstrating and propagating Chinese traditional culture. Moreover, this thesis aims to do some tentative research on Chinese Canadian English Literature.