Globalization In Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book

Maxine Hong Kingston, the famous Chinese American woman writer, is best known for her two companion semi-autobiographies The Woman Warrior (1976) and China Men (1980). An ethnic writer as she is, she never thinks that ethnic writers and their works should be confined to a particular category. Instead, she argues that great works by ethnic minority should not be denied a place in the world literary cannon. Kingston herself has been trying very hard to shake her ethnic brand off by writing into her literary works a sense of universality. Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989), claimed to be her first novel, serves as her personal statement to embrace the cosmopolitan idea and is the best sample to give us a full view of her attitude towards a series of issues in the Global Age and of her practice of global writing.No ethnic writers would miss the theme of cultural identity in their literary creation, because the state of being sandwiched between two worlds always makes their identity so blur and hard to define. The hero or heroine in these works, when dealing with their identity problem, seems to have only two choices: either identifies himself or herself with the host culture, or stick to the old ways of the root culture. To Kingston, identity could not remain fixed; rather, it is characterized by multiplicity and flexibility in this Global Age.Likewise, the traditional conception of community should be modified to fit in the current of globalization. According to Kingston, community is not defined by geographical location and community members are not necessarily groups of people with the same color of skin or nationality. Community, in her eyes, is a spiritual space where people share the same rituals and memories. What she tries to imagine is an inclusive community, in which everyone is able to find his own place and bring into full play his potential.In Tripmaster Monkey, Kingston also voices her creative ideas on feminism. As a feminist, she does not lose her feminist stance in this novel. To the relationship between men and women, Kingston presents views that are totally different from those of the orthodox feminists. In her opinion, it is a time to reconsider and make compromise. The next phase of feminism should be that the opposite sexes could learn to give the mutual love and support to each other. She points out that sticking to this positive attitude is the best way to solve the war between men and women.