Mona In The Promised Land From The Perspective Of Diaspora Criticism

Diaspora criticism, initiated in the 1990s, is a theoretical field focusing on the study of the social, economic and cultural attributes of diasporas. Its research areas subsume the identification and identity of diasporas, transnational flows of culture and diasporic issues in the context of globalization. Gish Jen is a renowned Asian American writer who dedicates her works to a full-scale and factual investigation of the living predicament of the Chinese Americans. Her novel Mona in the Promised Land is a depiction of the perplexing growth story of the second-generation Chinese Americans.This thesis is designed to elucidate the difficult existence of the Chinese diaspora in the novel from a perspective of diaspora criticism and to provide suggestions to address the diasporan predicaments. Chapter One is devoted to the disorienting process of Mona's experiment with her diasporan identity. Chapter Two looks into the diverging inclination of the first and the second generation of Chinese Americans when they deal with the relationships with the homeland and the hostland. Chapter Three investigates the interrelationships between the Chinese diaspora, the Jewish diaspora and the black diaspora, which bring to light the underlying the ethnic hierarchical system of America. The thesis concludes that in order to overcome the quandaries of the Chinese diaspora and to fix the maladies of an ethnically hierarchical society, the Chinese diaspora should cast away misconceptions about themselves and others and should achieve social mergence by enhancing panethnic communication and racial hybridity.