From The Native-Born’s Orientalism To The New Immigrant’s Counter-Orientalism

Both Amy Tan and Yan Geling are the influential Chinese American writers nowadays. Amy Tan is a representative of native-born Chinese American writers while Yan Geling is a landmark figure of new immigrant writers. Both of their representative works The Joy Luck Club and The Lost Daughter of Happiness have ranked top in New York Times best-seller list. Thus both books have won great attention from the academia.From the critics, one of the common concerns for both of the writers is their cultural recognition through their books. By putting the two books together with the application of Orientalism, this thesis tries to offer a new approach to settle this dispute. Moreover, the comparative study reveals a positive transformation which has been made within Chinese American literature. This thesis includes five parts:Chapter Ⅰ introduces the two writers and their works first; then reviews the literary comments on the two books and comparative studies around the two books; finally states the thesis.Chapter Ⅱ expounds the Orientalism with a review of Foucault’s notion of power and discourse.Chapter Ⅲ first offers the historical prejudiced perceptions towards the Chinese and the correspondent stereotypes of Chinese in America. Then this thesis points out that new images should be constructed to go with the developments of China nowadays.Chapter Ⅳ makes a detailed comparative analysis of the two books. From the comparison, it can be seen that the two authors’ different recognitions under different social discourse have led a contrasting arrangements in their works on the constructions of characters, descriptions of Chinese elements, and ways for happiness.Chapter Ⅴ reaches the conclusion:Though both being the outstanding Chinese American writer, native-born Chinese American writer Amy Tan writes under the influence of Orientalism; on the contrary, the new immigrant Chinese American writer Yan Geling makes full use of the writing discourse to promote the positive Eastern image. By this effort, she has challenged the dominant Orientalism and deconstructed the stereotyped images of Chinese in the western world. Therefore, from the native-born’s Orientalism to the new immigrant’s counter-Orientalism, it is quite a significant and positive progress for the Chinese American literature.