Racist Hate, Racist Love

Although Chinese Americans have lived in American continent over one hundredyears, they have been treated unfairly. Until now, there still exist some stereotypesabout Chinese Americans in the American society. Chinese Americans have alwaysbeen on a marginalized position in the American society. Frank Chin, as a forerunner ofChinese American literature, makes use of his pen as a dagger to fight against the racialprejudice in American white society, and in this way, he awakens the ethnic awarenessof Chinese Americans to fight for the equal rights in American society. From the worksof Frank Chin, we can see clearly his rebellious writing motifs: on one hand, he fightsbravely against the western hegemonic discourse with which the white racists imposeprejudiced stereotypes on the Chinese Americans;on the other hand, he reproachesfiercely those Chinese Americans who try to cater to the taste of the West byself-orientalizing Chinese culture and Chinese people. Also, through his writing, FrankChin expresses his wishes to propagate the orthodox Chinese culture and in this way toreconstruct a heroic Chinese American culture tradition. These motifs can be wellshown in his latest novel Gunga Din Highway.Gunga Din Highway develops mainly through the growth of Ulysses, theprotagonist of the novel. Along with the conflicts with his assimilated father and thevarious social injustices, Ulysses develops into a man with strong social awareness, adefender of ethnic culture of Chinese Americans who argues fiercely with thoseassimilated Chinese American writers. In this way, the author poses a strong criticismupon the phenomenon of neo-orientalism that exists in Chinese American literature.The marginalized position of Chinese Americans has close connection with thesocial and historical background and the ideological factors, so in this thesis, I'll applySaid's theory of Orientalism and Foucault's theory of Power of Discourse to analyze thesocial injustice and the causes of various prejudiced stereotypes on the Chineseimmigrants, and also the subversive strategies that the author uses to deconstruct thewestern hegemonic discourse and neo-orientalism. The thesis is made up of thefollowing six parts:The first part is a brief introduction of Frank Chin's family background and writingcareer as well as the history of Chinese Americans of that period of time, for the novelhas very close connection with the social and historical environment he lives in. Thenthe literature review about this novel is introduced, showing the recently critics on thisnovel and stating the theme of this thesis.Chapter One first introduces Said's theory of Orientalism and then applies thistheory to analyze the causes of the stereotypes about Chinese people in the "OrientalDiscourse" and the strategy Frank Chin used to deconstruct the prejudiced stereotypesof Chinese people in the American popular culture.Chapter Two analyzes, through the application of Foucault's theory aboutdiscourse of power, the essence of the western hegemonic discourse that constrainsthe mind of Chinese Americans and the instructive effect of Chinese culture traditionon the protagonist.In Chapter Three, the first part is a general introduction of Neo-orientalism--thehidden peril in Chinese American literature. Then through the arguments betweenUlysses and those assimilated Chinese Americans, the second part analyzes FrankChin's subversive use of parody and collage to fight against neo-orientalism.Chapter Four mainly analyzes the author's strategies to the exploration of a newChinese American identity. They include redefining Chinese American manhood byrevolting against the castration of Chinese American males and carrying forward theheroic tradition of Chinese culture.The last part is the conclusion, which is a general summary of the whole thesis andalso the practical significance of the novel.In Gunga Din Highway, Chin makes use of his writing as counter-hegemonicpractice to declare a war towards the perpetuation of stereotypical images in Americanpopular culture and the self-contempting conducts of those assimilated ChineseAmericans. Hence, Frank Chin's prominent "counter-discourse" is of great significancein the construction of a dignified and heroic Chinese American identity, which coexistsand enjoys equal rights with American mainstream society.