On The Reconstruction Of Chinese American History In China Men

China Men (1980) is another masterpiece following up The Woman Warrior (1976) by Maxine Hong Kingston (1940-), one of the most influential Chinese American women writers. In this work, Kingston provides a panoramic picture of male Chinese American immigrants from the middle of the 19th century to the 1970s, explores their immigration experience, and reconstructs Chinese American history. As is well known, the early Chinese American were the co-creators of American history, having done indelible contributions to the development and construction of the country. However, their experiences and conditions have rarely been presented and unjustly dealt with in American history, literary works and other cultural media. Kingston's China Men is undoubtedly a work of rectification and filling up. In this work, Kingston does not rigidly adhere to the authentic records about Chinese Americans as traditional historians usually do. Instead, she reconstructs history through interweaving family stories, historical facts and myths. Approaching from Michel Foucault's notion of history, mainly his "counter-memory", this thesis tries to explore how Kingston reconstructs Chinese American history through various effective means. A close reading of the text reveals that providing an alternate version of Chinese American history is an effective way of reclaiming the past, countering the American hegemonic discourse, and establishing Chinese Americans'cultural identities. The past two decades has witnessed numerous critical essays on Kingston's works at home and abroad, but most of them concentrate on The Woman Warrior, while China Men does not get as much attention as it deserves. Actually, some critics, including Kingston herself, speak more highly of the work in style and thematic concern. So the systematic study on this work in this thesis tries to evoke more attention to this work and early Chinese American history. The paper consists of 5 parts. The first part gives a brief survey of Chinese American immigration history, Chinese immigrants'major contributions to America, the silenced or distorted situation of Chinese Americans in American history, literature and other cultural media. Then it introduces Kingston's life, literary production, particularly her China Men, and concludes that China Men's imitation of the western epic in structure and theme shows Kingston's intention of writing a Chinese American epic. The second part explores Kingston's main strategy of counter-memory—talk-story. Through retelling how the male immigrants in her family participated in constructing America, struggled and rooted in America, Kingston, with these transgenerational adventures as an archetype, discloses the discontinuity of American history, and reconstructs an alternate Chinese American history from the perspective of Chinese Americans. Kingston's alternate history created by talk-story lays stress on the following aspects. First, by giving a vivid account of her (fore)fathers'adventures, particularly, great-grandfather's cultivating Hawaiian plantation, grand father's building the First Transcontinental Railroad, father's struggling and rooting in America, and brother's serving in the American army during the Vietnam War, Kingston highlights the outstanding contributions of Chinese Americans, and demonstrates that they are really American creators, constructors and soldiers. Secondly, when recounting her (fore)fathers'adventures, Kingston takes pain to describe their prowess and masculinity, the physical and spiritual sufferings they endured, the unusual courage, daring, and wisdom they exhibited in fighting against the discrimination, as well as their humorous and resilient ability to survive in adversity. These detailed descriptions help to recreate the new images of Chinese Americans and lead to the deconstruction of various stereotypical images of Chinese Americans as submissive, feminine, inscrutable, coward, indifferent, and lack of manhood and prowess. Thirdly, Kingston underscores Chinese Americans'ability to break silence. All China Men in the book, reluctant to endure the imposed silence, struggled to find a way of uttering their voices. Moreover, language, voice and speech in the work become bearers of manhood, power and identity. Thus all kinds of voices, such as Bak Goong's coughs, BaBa's nightly curses and screams, and brother's mumbles constitute a form of empowerment as well as a subverting force of hegemonic discourse. Finally, Kingston emphasizes the theme of claiming America. Countering the stereotype of Chinese Americans as sojourners who just went there to seek their fortune and had no intention of assimilating into American society, Kingston consciously creates a chronicle of China Men who unremittingly asserted their full identity as Americans and strenuously insisted on their equal rights. The third part discusses Kingston's another strategy of counter-memory—re-reading historical facts which mainly includes presenting discriminatory laws and citing photographs concerning Chinese Americans. The presentation of the American laws, which aim to disfranchise and exclude Chinese Americans for over one century, not only furnishes the background knowledge of the historical legislative racism against Chinese for general readers, but also forms a powerful and frank way of counter-memory. Moreover, the narrative style of this Chapter, "The Laws", which imitates the monotonous, monological voice of authorizing history, carries an ironic undertone and reinforces the theme of the book. As a form of counter-memory, the photographs cited in the book can be classified into two kinds: to prove the truth of these (fore)fathers'stories and their factual existence in America, or to expose the American authority's abuse of photographs to hide reality and exclude Chinese American from American history. The fourth part discusses the strategy—myth-rewriting, and Kingston's construction of history at the mythic level. From the perspective of history-writing, thisthesis explores the two main functions of the myths in China Men. First, they help to expose the dilemma of Chinese Americans. Because of being silenced, spiritually castrated and denied by their adopted country, their immigration experience is actually a song of diaspora. Secondly, while functioning to deconstruct a series of American myths such as the myth of America as a melting pot, the Gold Mountain myth, the myth of freedom and democracy, the myths in the book, on the other hand, provide a way for Kingston to write Chinese Americans into American pioneering mythology, and assign an ideological meaning to Chinese American history. This part ends with an emphasis that Kingston's alternate version of history does not partake a struggle for truth, and finalize the truth or assume the status of authority. Instead, her intention is to attest to the latter's failure as an all-powerful monologue. Just as she stresses the importance of silence-breaking, she hopes that her alternate version can provoke a listening from the mainstream discourse. The concluding part points out that Kingston's writing of China Men is not merely to reclaim the buried past for those silenced ancestors, but to envision a bright future for the young generations. She hopes that the young generations can know the value of their ethnic history, because, as she indicates, only by knowing their history and realizing the value embodied in it can the young generations establish their full identity as Chinese Americans in the multicultural American society.