Commenting On Balance And Harmony In The Woman Warrior

Maxine Hong Kingston is one of the most representative female Chinese-American writers in the late 20th century. Her work, The Woman Warrior, established her place in the history of American literature. The book depicts the heroine's experience growing up as a Chinese American in the United States and reveals the psychological growing process of Chinese women in the U. S. In the confrontation of the dual dilemmas of gender and race, this process is characterized by a transition from a kind of naive fantasy, to revenge, to violent revolt and finally to a pursuit of harmony and mutual understanding. For quite a long time, Chinese and Western scholars have done comprehensive research on this book. This thesis suggests that the book reflects the pursuit for balance and harmony from various perspectives. The vivid descriptions in the novel lays bare the struggle and experiences of Chinese Americans in the process of establishing their own cultural identity within the interlap of the two cultures. Not only are her writings rooted in Chinese literature, but also they are deeply influenced by American literature, reflecting the blending and collision of Eastern and Western cultures. The book reflects the pursuit of balance and harmony from various perspectives. The novel's narrative structure and cultural signs are analyzed and interpreted so as to show the writer's culture identity and the boundary of the interpretation of the novel. Kingston focuses on the identity and characteristics of Chinese Americans who are already part of the American society. The thesis is mainly divided into four chapters as follows.Chapter One examines the balance and harmony between individuality and collectivity in the book. Relative to the perspectives of structure and content, Kingston, as a Chinese-American writer of dual ethnicity and background, struggles for cultural psychological balance through her works. Kingston's efforts to achieve cultural psychological balance in her writing are not only the real reflection of the whole Chinese-American ethnic group, but a struggling process throughout the...