The Reconstruction Of Chinese Male Immigrants’ Images In The Writings Of Frank Chin And Maxine Hong Kingston

Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston are famous Chinese American writerswho try to deconstruct the stereotypes of Chinese male immigrants imposed by whiteculture and reconstruct Chinese male immigrants’images. However, they have seriousdivergences result from their different genders. They criticize each other’s strategiesin creating Chinese male immigrants’images. Frank Chin believes that Kingston’sreconstruction of Chinese American women’s images at the expense of Chineseimmigrant men’s images. While Kingston accuses of Chin’s advocation of Chinesetraditional patriarchy in order to deconstruct the stereotypes of Chinese immigrantmen imposed by the whites.Although there are many academic comments on Frank Chin’s and Maxine HongKingston’s writings, they are mainly comments from the perspectives of feminism,Chinese American immigrant history, identity construction and artistic skills.Therefore, this thesis will analyse the different strategies of Frank Chin and MaxineHong Kingston from the perspectives of post-colonialism and gender study, and theirstrategies from Chin’s novel Donald Duk and Kingston’s China Men and discuss theirdeconstructions of the distorted stereotypes of Chinese male immigrants given bywestern culture and construction of their masculine images.To analyze the strategies that Chin and Kingston use to reconstruct Chinese maleimmigrants’masculinity, it is necessary to make careful search of Orientalism andgender study. To analyse their writings, the paper is mainly divided into three parts:the first part summarizes the definition of whites’masculinity and American Orientalism with their racial essences. The second part makes a simple study ofpost-colonialism and gender study. Due to their different genders, Frank Chin andKingston create different masculine images for Chinese male immigrants. Therefore,the thesis makes respective analyses of Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston’sdeconstruction of Chinese American immigrants and construction of them. Finally, thelast part makes comprehensive analysis about their strategies including theiradvantages and disadvantages from post-colonialism and gender study.