The Confrontation Between A Chinatown Hero And A Western Knight

In recent years, new immigrant literature has developed rapidly and occupied an increasingly crucial position in overseas Chinese literature. As one of the most influential new immigrant writers in North America, Yan Geling employs in her much acclaimed work Fu Sang surrealism and poetic language to represent the traumatic history of the first-generation Chinese immigrants in San Francisco. Reputed as "the first epic of the overseas Chinese," Fu Sang’s English version "The Lost Daughter of Happiness" was among the top ten of the Los Angeles Times Best Seller List in2001.Literature review indicates that while existing studies on Fu Sang center vastly on the titular protagonist Fusang, there is as yet a disproportionally lack of detailed and sustained scrutinies on the wonderfully drawn leading male characters-the Chinese man Da Yong and the white boy Chris. In the novel, Yan not only endows her male figures with profound cultural implications, but also embeds within her text subversive ideas concerning the multiple power relations of gender, race and culture, a move which serves in effect as her critique of the traditional mode of sexual domination and white cultural hegemony. Drawing from the insights of Foucault’s theories of power relations, the related tenets of Kate Millet’s feminism and Edward Said’postcolonialism, as well as of the previous study on the female protagonist Fusang, this thesis seeks to conduct an in-depth examination on the male characters in Fu Sang and the way they are related to Yan’s exploration into sexual domination and cultural hegemony in the Chinese immigration history. Such an examination, as the thesis argues, sheds further light on Yan’s complex cultural identification and rational introspection as "a wandering nomad" living between worlds. Due to her immigrant experiences, Yan rejects simple identification with any culture, East or West. When looking into the Chinese culture, she tends to reexamine it from a Western perspective, and vice versa, exhibiting a broader and deeper cultural perspective after periods of "cultural alienation."...