From The World "I" To The World "We"

This dissertation aims at exploring the thematic issues in Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey based on the researches home and abroad.Well established in the American canon after receiving the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Woman Warrior and the National Book Award for China Men, Maxine Hong Kingston has become the most prominent figure in the Chinese American literary commumty and has gained a larger writing vision. The central theme in Kingston's works is identity-seeking. Kingston's pushing feminist interests and her individual pursuit of the gender identity in The Woman Warrior is just limited within "I" and this kind of selfhood "identity-seeking" reinforces to some extent the division among Chinese Americans. However, in Tripmaster Monkey, Kingston's horizon is broadened, shifting her vision to the world "We". She shows her concerns for the group identity of Chinese Americans in Tripmaster Monkey. She not only deals with the constructing of a new hybrid ethnic cultural identity with multiplicity, complexity and fluidity of Chinese Americans, but also shows her great concerns for the creating of an all-inclusive and harmonious community of Chinese Americans.To Kingston, identity is not fixed; rather, it is characterized with hybridity, multiplicity, complexity and fluidity. In Tripmaster Monkey, through the voice and play of the protagonist Wittman Ah Sing, whose name has many-layered profound meanings, through the cross-cultural postmodern juxtaposition of intertextuality, Kingston constructs a new hybrid ethnic cultural identity of Chinese Americans successfully.Meanwhile, Kingston attempts to create an all-inclusive and harmonious Chinese American community in Tripmaster Monkey. With the new cross-gender narrative voices in Tripmaster Monkey replacing the personal feminist voice in The Woman Warrior, Kingston incorporates almost all the voices in the Chinese American community without silencing the male voices or sacrificing the feminist interests and expresses her ideas about the creating of an all-inclusive and harmonious community of Chinese Americans. With the new language strategy, that is, the use of Chinese pidgin English and Cantonese as code-switching in the characters' speeches, Kingston tries to preserve the linguistic individuality and claim the group solidarity in the Chinese American community constructing the group linguistic identity of Chinese Americans whose language competence has been ignored and stereotyped by the dominant mainstream white society. With the construction of the group linguistic identity of Chinese Americans, Kingston promotes the creating of the Chinese American Community. And last but not least, with the theatrical art, with Wittman's play, Kingston envisions her all-inclusive and harmonious community of Chinese Americans.Therefore, with her successful constructing of the new hybrid ethnic cultural identity of Chinese Americans and the creating of the harmonious and all-inclusive Chinese American community in Tripmaster Monkey, Kingston ultimately realizes her vision-shift from the world "I" to the world "We".