Chinese Immigrants’Collective Anguish

During the past three decades, Chinese American literature has seen rapid development and come to its boom now, largely due to many Chinese American writers’outstanding performance in American literature circle. One of the famous writers flourishing at present is Lisa See, whose works attract more and more readers and critics. Shanghai Girls, her eighth masterpiece, caused great sensation in American literature and was listed as the4th most popular best-seller on New York Times for11consecutive weeks since its publication. The historical meanings and the writer’s historical consciousness in the novel lay sound foundation for analyzing the novel under the perspective of New Historicism.Studies on the novel from abroad mostly concentrate on the plot of the novel, the analysis of the characters’images, and cultural study. Studies at home are to start, for the novel is just being introduced. By close reading under the perspective of New Historicism, this thesis aims to fully explore and interpret the writer’s historical consciousness for better understanding the relationship between text and history from a new angle. Firstly, the thesis attempts to dig out the writer’s historical consciousness according to the literary view of New Historicism, and points out the factors affecting the writer’s historical consciousness. In this way, the thesis is to prove that Shanghai Girls participates in constructing the history of Chinese American immigrants’. Secondly, with the concepts of "Textuality of History" and "Historicity of Text", the thesis tries to explore the relationship between text and literature by analyzing the historical stories and events in the novel. Thirdly, the thesis attempts to find out the novel’s special focus on histories of the marginalized and the novel’s narrative modes, which are of great value to present the writer’s historical consciousness in a literary way. In this way, literature, the writer, and history are interrelated and interacting with each other.After a careful study, the author finds that, firstly literature and history are inter-textual. Literary text is produced by history and reshapes history at the same time. Secondly the writer’s historical consciousness penetrates the whole process in interpreting the relationship between literature and history, and analyzing the writer’s historical consciousness and its recurrence is of great help for better understanding the inter-textuality between literary text and history. Last but not least, analyzing Chinese American literature in a historical view is of great significance to breaking down the stereotyped images upon Chinese American immigrants, to building up the Chinese Americans’ image in the mainstream society, as well as promoting the interactive communication between the west and the east etc..This thesis studies Chinese American literature from the perspective of New Historicism, which further supplements the study of Chinese American literature. Meanwhile, it is expected that the Chinese American descendants can learn more history of the immigrants, and cultural inheritance of China, so that they can be enhanced and filled with pride as a member of Chinese minority. Last, the author hopes that the thesis will be beneficial for readers to study and fully understand the relationship between literature and history from the perspective of New Historicism.