Treats Of New Immigrants Literary Creation. "fuso"

As one of the most influential overseas-Chinese immigrant writers, Yan Geling's works of New Immigrant Literature have made a great contribution towards depicting the lives of Chinese immigrants abroad. This thesis will take one of her works—The Lost Daughter of Happiness, epitome re-imagining of the history of Chinese immigrants in America, as a jumping-off point to analyze and explore the changes of Yan Geling's writing's feature and value after her immigration to U.S.A..Three parts compose this thesis; the first discusses Yan Geling's position in the history of immigrant literature, by talking about the birth and development of Chinese immigrant literature in America. Compared to those immigrant writers of earlier times, Yan Geling's writing of New Immigrant literature breaks with the traditional themes of"misery","hatred", and"homesickness", and her concerns are not exclusively intellectuals but more people from different levels in the social hierarchy. She has created a group of nobodies in her works, and shows great sympathy to them for the humbleness and difficulty of their lives. She is also understanding and forgiving when dealing with their human mistakes and imperfections that emerge under extraordinary circumstances. Yan Geling uses her"unique sensitivity", drawn from her own identity as an immigrant, in order to write about immigrants, and to reexamine herself, understand the world, and decipher humanity, all the time pointing towards the eternal theme that"literature is about Humanity".The second part discusses Yan's concern and writing about the anxiety of the immigrant experience, which she does using shifting perspectives and fantasy. Facing the anxiety and confusion of being on the margins of both Chinese and American culture, Yan Geling gives up finding an absolute belonging to either one of the cultures, but finds belonging in literature, which transcends the differences of cultures. Her unique style of writing reconciles the idiosyncrasy of both the individual and the nation through the pursuit of cultural belonging and identity. In this belonging, she enjoys the maximized freedom, and is given abundant literary language and an absurd but beautiful world of literature. Her experience as an immigrant changed the focus of her writing from women oppressed by a male-dominated society, to immigrants oppressed by the mainstream culture. Although she writes about the triviality and the suffering of the daily life of immigrants, it transcends the dialog of assimilation and delves into the discussion of the universal predicaments of life and humanity. The marginalized identity of immigrants also inspires fantasies about the mainstream culture, which is quite different from their own culture, and from which no one can escape. However, these fantasies can't be examined within the strict framework of reality. Yan Geling's writing about immigrants takes these fantasies, recognizes them, explores them, and then allows them to be shattered as they collide with reality.Finally, the third part will discuss Yan Geling's use of literary devices such as montage, multi-perspective narration and the use of metanarratives. These devices help the readers develop imaginations for the understanding of implications behind the book.