Feminine Saying Within The Hybrid Cultural Context

From the postcolonial and feminist perspective, this thesis analyzes the Chinese American women writers struggle to break the silence and construct the identity for Chinese American women in between ethnic and gender cultural.This paper firstly defines the concept of "American Chinese literature" and "new immigrant literature" by different of literary views. Chapter one is a brief introduction of the history of the Chinese American literature.Chapter two analyzes the Chinese American women writers struggle to break the silence and construct the identity for Chinese American women and inherit tradition of the Chinese culture. Chinese American women are the victims of both American hegemonic ideology, which devalues them because of their race, and patriarchal ideology, which devalues them because of their gender. Moreover, patriarchal oppression comes not only from colonialist Americans, but also from their own patriarchal Chinese culture. The Civil Rights Movement and Feminist Movement prompted Chinese American women to break the silence and seek the unique identity of Chinese American women.Chapter three dwells on the female of works by Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan and Yan Geling. In analyzing works of Kingston, "Hermaphrodite" and "madwoman"are utilized. The transition of the relationship between mothers and daughters from conflicts to reconciliation is the daughters' rejection and acceptance of the mothers and the mothers' Chinese culture. It has a detailed analysis of the several types of love described by Yan Geling—the contradiction between love and ego of the female and the feeling between Eastern females and Western males from the angle of the love mode and feminine writing of Yan Geling's novels. It indicates Yan Geling's adherence to the feminine standpoint and perspective and her peculiar female experience. The conclusion searched throughout the thesis is: positioned as a minority in the predicament between the two worlds of Chinese (east) and America (west), the Chinese American women writers and Chinese American literature, will have to realize their situation and make use of the advantage of their unique peripheral position, so as to rid of the misery and passivity that they are suffering, step out of the dilemma with confidence and reclaim their ethnic and gender identity in their own voice.