The Counter-discourse Strategy In Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book

During the one and a half centuries, Chinese Americans got success in many aspects, but the prejudiced stereotypes also exist in American society and culture and Chinese Americans are still on the borderline of American society. Chinese Americans writers have tried a lot to protect Chinese Americans'images, to counterattack the western hegemonic discourse, to emphasize and to propagate Chinese cultural classics. Maxine Hong Kingston creates great works, which are exposal of the unequal treatment Chinese Americans got and condemnation to the mainstream discourse's press and discrimination. Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book is such a novel. The author displays Americans'attitude towards Chinese Americans and their social status by the narration of Wittman Ah Sing's life after graduation and his becoming of the rebel of the mainstream culture as well as his counterattacking of the hegemonic discourse by his play's rehearsal and show.This thesis makes a research on the stereotyped images of Chinese Americans in mainstream culture and analyzes the author's application and function of counter-discourse strategy to fight against the hegemonic discourse. The thesis consists of five parts: the first one is a brief introduction to Kingston, and Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book; and talks about the hegemonic discourse, the stereotypes of Chinese Americans formed in American mainstream society and brief introduction to the counter-discourse's application in the thesis; chapter one introduces the intercultural narration as one way of counter-discourse with the examples of the use of famous Chinese literary works and the effects it creates; chapter two focuses on hero narration as another way of counter-discourse, which is used to fight against the hegemonic discourse and its use; chapter three deals with Chinatown narration as the third way of counter-discourse, which subverts the untrue description of Chinatown in mainstream culture; the conclusion part gives a summary of the strategy Kingston applied as a weapon to fighting against hegemonic discourse and rebuilding Chinese images.Kingston exposes the stereotypes of Chinese Americans in American mainstream culture, subverts the untrue and unfair narration of Chinese Americans, counterattacks hegemonic discourse and rebuilds new Chinese American images.