Cultural Nostalgia Of The Country To Look Back

Yu Lihua is a famous contemporary overseas Chinese Writer. She writes a series of works about Chinesestudents studying abroad and Chinese’s life, so she is called “the mother of overseas students’ literature” and“the spokesman of generation without root.”. Of all the works of Yu Lihua, hometown is a very importanttheme. In her works, she transformed her attachment of her hometown-China into memories and writing. Thehomeland becomes a spiritual and ideal home which carries overseas Chinese’s emotion and ideals.The first chapter of this thesis is called drifting in the memory of hometown. This part mainly discusses YuLihuas’ novels from the angle of memories of hometown. The complex of native land is a kind of collectiveunconsciousness of overseas writers, from which writers could get a kind of experience of reliance.Throughout the history of Chinese literature, there is no lack of works discussing “hometown”, so "Nativeland" spirit has become an important thread in the history of Chinese literature. Distinguished from otherwriters, Yu Lihua did not express her nostalgia merely through emotional release, but also throughdemonstration of the memories of hometown,"self writing",and a series of original images.The second chapter of this thesis is called unlimited attachment to the homeland.The essence ofhomeland-writing is the search of cultural identity and refuge. The loss of identity brings about anxiety anddeep loss to the overseas Chinese while they live abroad. Only by returning to the memories of hometown canthey find the self-identity and identity. Through writing in Chinese, Yu Lihua builds her hometown of language,in which she manages to find herself and her spiritual home. However, hometown only exists in herimagination. The hometown in reality is not belonging.So, figures hesitating between leaving and staying arethe common narrative mode of Yu Lihua’s novels.The third chapter of this thesis is called the tireless pursuit of ideal hometown. In Yu Lihua’s later creation,she reflects on and explores hometown with metaphysics. Thus her missing of hometown rises to the pursuit ofthe ideal hometown. She breaks the binary opposition between original culture and the foreign culture.With amore broad mind and a more rational criticism, she searched for integration in the collision of eastern cultureand western culture, and constructed the pluralistic cultural space, namely, the ideal homeland she pursues.Hometown runs thourgh Yu Lihua’s novels, becoming an important part of her writing style. Studying YuLihua’s novels from the perspective of narrative of hometown could help to enrich the study of her novels,explore the profound meaning of her works, and help us to better understand the writer’s spiritual world.