From Cultural Conflict And Racial Clash To Ethnic Coexistence

Maxine Hong Kingston and Alice Walker, who come respectively from Chinese American and Afro-American backgrounds, are two of the most highly acclaimed writers in the contemporary American ethnic literature. Their works best substantiate the authors' speculations on American minority's conditions. In The Woman Warrior and The Color Purple, which are considered to be their masterpieces, they both engage in depicting the growing experiences of colored girls who have pride and dignity but suffer the hardship as colored females. The low social status of American colored women and their voicelessness are displayed in the books. The females emerging in the books lose their "names" and their identities in the male-reigning society. They submit to self-imprisonment and keep silent while feeling trapped in the white and male's world. Therefore, how to regain their lost voice and identity becomes another important theme in the two books. The success of the main characters in the two books exemplifies the amalgamation of different cultures and the obtaining of the dual identities of ethnic Americans.In the meantime, Maxine Hong Kingston and Alice Walker embody their ideas in different ways because of their different cultural backgrounds. The cultural conflicts, which are presented by the mother-daughter relationship, serve as the main concern in Chinese Americans' writings. The Chinese Americans, such as Kingston, strive to mediate the opposing forces of the two cultures and adapt themselves to American society. Different from Kingston, Walker mainly concentrates on the racial and gender discriminations against black women. In her book, she reveals the miserable life of the black people both in America and Africa and creates a new image of an independent black woman. The fulfillment of regaining their dual identities as both American and black indicates black people's reaching back to their long-lost freedom and ethnic heritage. In this comparative study of the two books, affirmative attitudes are advanced towards the future of different nations and their cultures — that is communication, understanding and coexistence.