"mona In The Promised Land" Jewish Complex

Gish Jen is a Chinese American woman writer who gains high reputation after Maxine Hong Kinston and Amy Tan. The language in her works is full of humor and wisdom. In addition, on handling the ethnic identity issues, no one can be paralleled with her. Mona in the Promised Land is Jen's second novel which describes how Mona, the second daughter of the Changs in Typical America, Jen's first novel, searches for her identity under the influence of multi-culture in American society.This thesis firstly elaborates how Jewish culture has the great influence on Americans and on ethnic minorities in America from the perspective of cultural criticism, and secondly demonstrates the Jewish complex of the main characters in the novel. Lastly, the thesis reaches the conclusion that the Jews have a huge impact on the American society after two thousand years'diaspora. The Introduction gives a brief account of Jen's life, her literary achievements and the researches done on Gish Jen and Mona in the Promised Land both at home and abroad. Chapter One introduces the application of cultural criticism and its research methods and the influence of Jewish culture and Jewish writers on Jen; Chapter Two presents the culture background of Jewish complex which includes the geographical background as well as the cultural conflicts and changes; Chapter Three describes the Jewish complex of the main characters in the novel and their understanding of the Jewish culture; the Conclusion summarizes the major findings and the theoretical and practical significance of the thesis and points out the limitation and make suggestions for the future research.