Pursuing The Third Space Examining Kingston's Cultural View In The Woman Warrior

Maxine Hong Kingston is a Chinese American writer, occupying an important place in Chinese American literature since the publication of her first book The Woman Warrior. As an early Chinese immigrant descendant, Maxine Hong Kingston is a marginalized person living between two cultures. It is hard to define her identity with traditional concepts of ethnicity and culture. However, there is no denying that the uncertainties in her ethnic and cultural identity have provided her with a different perspective from other mainstream writers. The seemingly awkward position is made advantageous and enables her to possess a better understanding of the two cultures.This thesis intends to examine Maxine Hong Kingston's cultural view advocated in her masterpiece The Woman Warrior. Supported by the postcolonial writer Homi Bhabha's theory—Third Space, the thesis argues that Kingston's cultural view is to propose and pursue a cultural third space. The culture existing in this space belongs neither to Chinese nor to American, but a new culture, a so-called third culture. It is the result of negotiation between western and eastern culture, thus it is a new one yet closely connected with the two.The thesis examines Kingston's efforts on pursuing a third space from three aspects. Firstly, chapter one discusses the reason why Kingston wants to seek the third space. As a member of the second-generation Chinese immigrants, Kingston deeply understand their hard situation in between Chinese and western cultures. In her novel, she vividly depicts what American Chinese have experienced such as the conflicts between home and host culture, the helplessness in front of the reality and the confusion about their future. They are unwilling to return to the Chinese culture which they know little yet resisted by the white dominating culture, thus running into a double predicament. It is such a fact that drives Kingston into the pursuit of the third space.The second chapter introduces the approach that Kingston adopts to set up her third space: hybrid policy. Kingston rewrites many Chinese classical myths in the book, each with a subverting indication. The chapter analyzes two of them, the stories of Mulan and Ts'ai Yen, pointing out that the reinterpretation is intended to shape hybrid racial identity and cultural ideas. Hybrid policy becomes the major approach for Kingston to seek her third space.The third chapter investigates the narrative strategies that the book takes, maintaining that they best illustrate that Kingston has applied her third-space cultural view to practice. In this novel, Kingston adopts some traditional Chinese narrative skills as well as the western postmodernism writing style, and attains a result of distinct hybrid narrative. This well proves the viability of third space notion in respect of literary creation.Finally, the thesis forms the conclusion that after transcending the boundary of nation, culture and language, Kingston is arduously pursuing an ethnic and cultural third space through her writing. Not only has she provided a workable solution to Chinese immigrants'predicament but also gives attestation that the solution can be accessed to.