Gish Jen's Cultural Strategies Of Redefining The American Identity

It is generally agreed that multiculturalism creates a more favorable social environment for American ethnic groups as a whole and in the milieu of American multiculturalism, Chinese American literature has made unprecedented progress in the last two decades. Among the new generation of Chinese American writers, presumably Gish Jen is the boldest, for she is daring enough to write about "the things that are dangerous", the things that have never been touched on by previous Chinese American writers. This thesis undertakes the task of exploring her cultural strategies of redefining American in her two novels and the title story of a collection, namely, Typical American, Mona in the Promised Land and "Who's Irish? " .After a brief introduction to American multiculturalism and Gish Jen's life and works in Chapter I, Chapter II bases its analysis of Ralph's pursuit of economic success on Hochschild's enlightening theory on the fallacy of the American dream, pointing out that Ralph's aspiration after being integrated with mainstream America through embracing the American dream is doomed to failure considering the then social environment of the 1950s. This same chapter further notes that the immigrant family who initially say disparagingly that something is typical American ironically turn typically American themselves in the end, and that in the transforming process, tempted by the irresistible power of the consumer society, each of them undergoes a painful experience, thereby their respective identities reformulated.Chapter III deals with the two major issues in Mona in the Promised Land: the generational conflict and the interethnic relations. As I understand, what Gish Jen wants to convey to the readers through the conflict between Mona and her mother is that the Chinese Americans should learn from the Jewish Americans and the African Americans, who advocate "ask, ask, instead of just obey, obey". And in the episode "Camp Gugelstein" is reflected the author's wish for a new America where all racial groups will live in harmony-with each other as equals.Chapter IV reveals how the narrator in the story "Who's Irish?" comes to realize that in order to "find a place" in America, Chinese Americans must cast away their irrational prejudice against other ethnic groups and learn as much as possible from their experience of power struggles.In the concluding chapter, the thesis maintains that these above-mentioned three works are all about fluidity of identity. By complicating the issue of the American identity, Gish Jen leads her readers to reconsidering the definition of American today. As she claims, "[America] did start with a bunch of English people who decided they weren't English anymore. From the beginning it has been about fluidity of identity ".