Troubled Souls Of Double Cultures

In the more than one hundred years of its history Chinese American literature has developed its own characteristics. Chinese American writers' unique position and experience endow them with a double identity and a particular vision when they try to explain what they have experienced or are experiencing. This double identity exposes them to both great uncertainties and numerous possibilities. Their in-between status is well displayed in two works by Maxine Hong Kingston and David Henry Hwang, namely, The Woman Warrior and M. Butterfly. This thesis will explore two aspects of the two works, each showing one side of the theme, that is: through the agency of literature, Chinese-American writers strive to forge a new ethnic identity, to define a unique sensibility, to delineate a new social and political space called Chinese America, and from hence, to enhance the physical and psychological well-being of Chinese-Americans. Having experienced confusion about identity, pressure of cultural conflicts and loss of values, Chinese-American writers have gone through a process of reorientation and have come to a reawakening of self-recognition. Transformed from self-denial to self-acceptance and then to self-transcendence, from conflicts and struggle to reconciliation and understanding, from being torn between two worlds to combining the strengths and resources of East and West, they act as a herald in thawing the ice of prejudice and encouraging mutual understanding between China and America, between East and West.