China Men's American Nightmare

This thesis is a study of Chinese immigrants'American nightmare represented in Maxine Hong Kingston's half autobiographical work China Men, which describes the nightmarish experience of Kingston's male ancestors and brothers before 1980s. American nightmare is the opposite side of the everlasting motif"American dream", which originated from the puritan belief of"building a city upon the hill". Maxine Hong Kingston is one of the most famous contemporary female writers in America. China Men is her second successful work, which was written in the year of 1980 and immediately won the National Book Award under the category of"non-fiction". This title shows its strong local, racial and gender colors, and is an inscription to her male ancestors'heroic contribution to America.Supported by the postcolonial writer Homi Bhabha's theory, this thesis intends to explore the solution to the problem of Chinese immigrants'America nightmare. To Kingston and her forefathers, American dream contains various forms, such as the pursuit for gold, the quest for liberty and so on. The ultimate goal of their American dreams is to claim American identity, which is embodied in rewriting the contribution, the suffering and the exclusion of her forefathers represented by four generations. Those Chinese immigrants alter their outlook and manners to prove their American identity; however, the articulating of American identity is smashed because of their ethnicity status and the color of skin. The accompanying distortion of personality, the emasculated male characters and the despised women roles prove that her forefathers'dream of becoming"real Americans"form into bubble in the process of striving for success. The injustice and hypocritical exclusion laws in Capitalized America society are the direct cause in breaking Chinese immigrants'beautiful dreams.This thesis is made up of five parts. The first part serves as an introduction which deals with the general background about the work China Men, its author Maxine Hong Kingston, and the American dream. In addition, the innovation significance to research gap, and the theories applied in this paper are also explicated.Chapter one concentrates directly on China men's original beautiful American dreams, the breaking of the dreams, and the way in which those white people's economic exploitation on four generations of China men: the great grandfather of the Sandalwood Mountains, the grandfather of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the American father, and the brother in Vietnam. The harsh working and living environment form vivid contrast to the superficial paradise according to the villagers who had ever come to the Gold Mountain. Each of the four generation stands for one kind of primordial experience in the United States who suffers nothing but endless toil and exploitation.Chapter two discusses American people's isolation and exclusion to the Chinese immigrants and the reasons behind. It explores issues of the hypocritical and injustice laws that regulate and limit the entry of Chinese into America and their ability to apply for America citizenship. It explains in detail why China men's language power is deprived and the spiritual oppression lead to the distortion in personality. This part is centrally concerned with the borderline identity of those immigrants. It is hard for the descendants of those Chinese Americans to settle balance between the two cultures, since they are denied by both.Chapter three examines the gender distortion and depreciation of Chinese Americans. Male characters are emasculated in the process of contributing to the construction of America by employing female jobs, and leading a bachelor life. Chinese American women are excluded from the center of power, suffering from a double oppression from their status of women and their minority identity.Finally, based upon the above discussion, this thesis comes to the following conclusion: Chinese sojourners and immigrants in America are not in paradise but in dilemma. It is the oppression of sexism and racism that makes the Chinese-American history of struggle into the history of disaster. Only by fusing the eastern and western culture to set up a cultural"third space"can they conquer the injustice society, and solve the inequity. In this sense, this paper has great social and realistic significance in analyzing the Chinese immigrants'plight.