Going Beyond Ethnicity: A Poetic Study Of Li-young Lee’s Poetry

Li-Young Lee is a well-acclaimed Asian American poet in the United States. Up tillnow, he has published four collections of poetry and a memoir. His poetry hasreceived numerous rewards, such as the Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award, theLannan Literary Award and the Whiting Writer’s Award and so on. Western criticsbelieve his wide acceptation is due to his exotic Chinese elements meandering in hispoems, while others argue that this kind of reading should be discarded and we shouldfocus on his poetic forms and styles. However, the domestic research on Lee’s poemsis rare. Through close reading, this thesis aims to analyze the ethnicity and thenon-ethnicity in his poems. The main body is divided into three chapters. The firstchapter analyzes the ethnical elements in Lee’s poems, pointing out that Lee’s poeticcreation is under the influence of Tang poems and the Chinese traditional value of“father and son” relationship; The second chapter investigates how western cultureinfluences Lee’s poems, which is embodied through Lee’s pursuit of artisticforefathers and his reconstruction of Asian American male characters. The last chaptercenters on the images with both the aspects of ethnicity and non-ethnicity, theseaspects make Lee’s poems profound. My conclusion is that the depictions of ethnicityand non-ethnicity are the reflections of fusion and balance between Chinese cultureand western culture, which, indeed, go beyond the ethnicity. The two forces create atension in Li-Young Lee’s poems. The tension, namely, his desire to free from hisChinese culture against his unconsciously deployment of Chinese elements and ethnicmarkers makes his poems unique.