A Double-voiced Approach To Kingston's Male Characterization

In the autobiographical novels The Woman Warrior (1976) and China Men (1980), Maxine Hong Kingston (1940- ), through a female insight, characterizes the Chinese American women and men respectively and examines their immigrant experiences and inner minds. The literary circle has widely noticed and discussed the female characters in Kingston's works, while the analysis of her male characters is relatively ignored. Therefore, through the angle of a double-voiced discourse, this thesis attempts to approach Kingston's male characterization by making use of the theories of feminism and postcolonialism.Because of her double identities both as a woman and as a Chinese, Kingston is simultaneously sympathetic and angry toward the men in her ethnic community: sensitive to the men's marginality but resentful of their sexism. In order to coordinate her conflicting emotions, Kingston makes use of a double-voiced discourse to portray the male characters. Specifically, the double-voiced discourse refers to Kingston's double consciousness, one is her gender consciousness as a female against both Chinese and white American patriarchy, the other is her ethnic consciousness as a minority against the racism represented by the white dominant society. The double voices are evident in both Kingston's works, appearing either individually or simultaneously. To be more explicit, in The Woman Warrior, Kingston's antisexist voice - directed most vehemently against Chinese patriarchy - governs the dominant plot, while the critique of white norms is tucked into the margins of the text. On the contrary, in China Men, Kingston's antiracist voice is the major voice and her antisexist voice is the aberrant one.In her female voice against sexism, Kingston intentionally weakens male characters and lowers them to minor characters while strengthens female characters in The Woman Warrior. She chooses two ways to weaken the masculinity of male characters. One way is to portray them as being irresponsible, autocratic, immoral, and insane. The other way is to depart from the masculine norms by endowing the male characters with the so-called feminine qualities like deference, respect, andloyalty.In her ethnic voice against racism, Kingston smashes the controlling image of the emasculated Chinese men and tries to reconstruct Chinese American masculinity in China Men. The lives of four male characters make up three generations of Chinese men, and they all experience the effects of cultural and racial stereotypes, economic deprivation, and emasculation. Kingston portrays them as the Gold Mountain Heroes in the recognition of their contributions to the economic and social development of North America.Sometimes Kingston's double voices overlap as a double-edged antiracist, antisexist sword, which is adequately embodied by the controlling myth of Tang Ao's story at the beginning of China Men and the silence imposed on men. By drawing parallels between the degradation of Chinese men in white America and the suppression of women in traditional Chinese society, Kingston portrays the emasculation of her Chinese fathers and simultaneously implies patriarchal abuses within Chinese culture.Through the double-voiced discourse, while portraying the male characters, Kingston both deconstructs the Confucian patriarchy and reconstructs Chinese American manhood, both claims her female subjectivities and restores the hero traditions. Like a woman warrior, Kingston has articulated double voices to challenge both patriarchal abuses and racial castration. Therefore, her portrayal of male characters through the double-voiced discourse provides Chinese American women writers with a way to negotiate the tangle of sexual and racial politics.