A Journey Of Returning To Soul

Chinese Americans have been living in the United States for more than one hundred years, and have contributed a lot to the development of the host society. However, due to the existence of various stereotypes and biases, they have remained marginalized by the mainstream society. Therefore, the purport of Chinese American literary works is to break the cultural hegemony and to seek identity in the mainstream society. Frank Chin is one of the forerunners of Chinese American literature. Through his writing, Frank Chin expresses his wishes to propagate the identity-realization and to reconstruct a new form of Chinese American literature. Donald Duk is the right novel to study Chin's speculations on Chinese American identity.Centering around the growth of a Chinese American young adult in Frank Chin's first novel Donald Duk, this thesis applies theories of Bildungsroman to offer an analysis of different aspects associated with the initiation of the protagonist named Donald Duk. After a general introduction about the background of the investigation, this thesis demonstrates the traditional generic features of Bildungsroman in respects of theme, protagonist and structure. Integrating the text analysis, the body of this thesis expounds the generic features of Bildungsroman in Donald Duk through narrating the process of the hero from identity crisis and eager to initiation to self-realization and maturity under the influence of several mentors. It's believed that when borrowing the paradigm of Bildungsroman, Chin skillfully blends the myth with history, dreams with reality to accomplish Donald Duk's accommodation into society and initiation. So Donald Duk distinctly embodies Frank Chin's writing standpoint:Chinese Americans'ideal existence on American lands is to grasp their historical and cultural heritage, to recognize their ethnic identity, and to gain their dignity and acknowledgment from American mainstream society.