Searching For A New Self

Fea Myenne Ng has come to the forefront of contemporary Asian Americanliterature after the renowned writers like Maxine Hong Kinston and Amy Tan.Nowadays, Fae Myenne Ng has been a Chinese-American novelist who has drawnmuch attention from American readers and critics. Fae Myenne Ng is a secondgeneration Chinese American and a graduate of California at Berkley. She wasborn in 1957 and received her Master Degree in Liberal Arts in 1984 at theColumbia University. Since 1989, she has lived in Brooklyn where she worked as awaitress to support herself while she wrote the many drafts of Bone Bone is Fae Myenne Ng's excellent novel about three sisters grew up in SanFrancisco's Chinatown. The story that everyone knows is how the middle sister,Ona commits suicide by jumping off the Nam, a local housing project officiallynamed the Nam Ping Yuan. Then the novel tells of the struggle of the narrator, theeldest sister Leila, and of her mother, stepfather and the youngest sister Nina todeal with this death and the guilty they all feel. Mah, the mother feels that it's aresult of bad luck brought on by the affair that she has with the boss;Leon, thefather thinks the tragedy strikes because he violates his vow to ship his father'sbones back to China. Leila and Nina are sure that they could have stopped it if theyhad had just one more conversation with Ona. But these explanations, of course,prove unsatisfactory and the story unfolds almost like a mystery as Leila's memoryflashes back to reconstruct this family's life and the chain of events that mustsomehow lead Ona to that rooftop.However, despite the fact that this novel has aroused the attention from theAmerican literature world, most American critics and readers have valued Boneprimarily as an autobiography---an autobiography that reflects the misery history ofChinese immigrants, but few people have perceived completely new views ofcultural identity that are going on beneath this literary text. Therefore, thisdissertation intends to explore the novel in the perspective of cultural identity thatis based on Chinese culture and American culture. Through the process of Leila'sself-identification and her strategies that result from a confused cultural identity, Icriticize the culture assimilation mode of "Melting Pot", and advocatemulticulturalism.The world we are living in today is becoming more global and diverse.Confronting the challenge from the American hegemonic culture, more and morenations as well as individuals are facing the dilemma of cultural identity. Therefore,in certain sense, Fae Myenne Ng's explorations of cultural identity can pave a newroad for some descendents of Chinese American people, and have a very realisticand profound significance in our understanding and enhancing the development ofthe present world.