Harmony, Integration, Pacifism In Maxine Hong Kingston's The Fifth Book Of Peace

As one of the few ethnic writers accepted by American mainstream society, Maxine Hong Kingston is incontrovertibly a very influential and significant writer in American ethnic literature.Her first three award winning works--The Woman Warrior, China Men and Tripmaster Monkey,are mostly about such issues as feminism, masculinity,history,identity,and ethnic politics.However,as a writer,she shows no less concern for the societal issues of universal appeals such as the desire for love and freedom,pursuit of art and happiness,and exploration of life and death.This study strives to explore the harmony,integration and pacifism reflected in her new book The Fifth Book of Peace.By comparing this book with Kingston's previous works and placing it in the context of all her writings,this dissertation contends that as an unswerving pacifist in literature as well as in life,Kingston has always had pacifism as the chief thread that runs through all her writings although she doesn't make it overt until in The Fifth Book of Peace.Instead of completely avoiding touching upon gender and race issues,this study devotes two chapters to the discussion of Kingston's pacifistic feminism and her perspective on the integration of cultures and identities.But what makes this research different from those previous researches on feminism and cultural identity,is that the two chapters of this research are actually contributive to the analysis of Kingston's pacifism,aiming to elucidate that Kingston's feminism in this book is peace-oriented pacifistic feminism which features a reciprocal,supportive and harmonious men-women relation,and cultural integration is for the purpose of maintaining balance and peace in a multicultural society where various cultures and multiple identities coexist.With an intention to find the real ways to create peace,this study further illustrates effective ways suggested in this book to create peace,including establishing community,putting on plays,and appealing for Buddhist wisdom.Kingston believes to bring a true end to the war,one has to bring the two parties at war to live in a community.But to build a community is not enough.A community doesn't work for peace until plays are put on to speak for its communal belief.Buddhism is another highlight in this book.Treated as a philosophy,a wisdom and a world view,Buddhism becomes a spiritual law which deters war and stops killing.From this study it can be found that after years of writing,Kingston now transcends the boundary of gender and ethnic politics,successfully throws off the label of"ethnic writer",and turns to be a global writer with more concern for issues of universal appeals with a strong sense of social obligations.This study is necessary and significant in that nowadays with the development of information technology and the enhancement of communication among nations,a world war is not likely to happen but local conflicts and wars between countries of different values and interests still break out frequently.It is important for us to know how to prevent all these wars happening and how to solve conflicts peaceably.War destructs everything,but its only useful legacy is that it urges people to think over the meaning of life and value peace.