Narration As Reflector Of Identity

Maxine Hong Kingston (1940-) is a very famous Chinese American writer whose great popularity among both readers and critics was first brought about by her book The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts. The subject of immigrants she talks about in the book has given rise to numerous discussions and seminars worldwide. In the past years, much has been studied in terms of culture and social and sexual politics, however, there is still much to be done in such aspects as discourse and perspective in the cultural identity construct of the narrator/main character. Thus, a further narrative study of the discourse and perspective in TWW becomes the presumptuous intention of this thesis. It is hoped, through detailed textual reading and analysis, to prove that the narrator is trying throughout to construct a new perspective and create a new language that would best represent her social status, i.e. a new cultural identity of hybridity, a Chinese American who speaks Cantonese English.The paper is divided into five chapters. Chapter One is a brief introduction to the author, the work and literature reviews;Chapter Two covers the basic concepts of narrative perspective and discourse analysis. In Chapter Three the narrative perspectives— two conflicting perspectives, two paralleling perspectives and a new perspective— are studied in reference to the related stories. Chapter Four's analysis of the two languages employed by the narrator are conducted from the aspect of grammar, accent and image. Chapter Five is the conclusion.