Cultural Identity Development Of The Chinese American Girl:a Study Of Laurence Yep’s Child Of The Owl

Child of the Owl is the product of American Civil Rights Movement，a novel written by theChinese American writer Laurence M. Yep in1977. The story is concerned about a ChineseAmerican girl named Casey. The protagonist does not think much about her American identityuntil one day she moves into Chinatown and gradually understands Chinese culture. The thesisuses Stuart Hall’s theory to explore the process of Casey’s cultural identity development froman all-American to a Chinese American, which proves that the fluidity of a lived culturalidentity works out in the midst of a multicultural context.According to Hall’s theory, cultural identity is interpreted from two aspects. First, it isconstructed as a stable and unchanging frame of reference based on one, shared origin,history and culture. The second aspect suggests that cultural identity involves differenceand diversity for it always develops in a fluid process through which the subjects presentand construct themselves. Therefore it can be inferred that both types of Chinese whocompletely accept the structural assimilation and those who resist it maintain a pure andstable cultural identity that could easily lead to the discrimination and cultural barriersbetween different groups. The static notion of identity also causes restrictions andoppressions on the subjects’ individuality, which is inadvisable for the self-exploration ofChinese American adolescents.Born in the mainstream American culture, the protagonist girl Casey is once trappedin her sole Americanness and feeling uncertain and confused about her identity when shemoves into Chinatown. However, with the support of her grandmother Paw-Paw and othermembers of Chinatown community, she rids herself of the attachment anxiety and themisunderstanding of the stereotyped images of Chinese. Casey gradually absorbs Chineseculture, including foodways, local movies, her original Chinese name and history, to completeher Chineseness. At last, she makes up her mind to construct her own identity thatintegrates Chinese and American cultures. Meanwhile, Yep’s new interpretation of the owlmyth also functions positively in Casey’s identity development. Not only has Yep affirmedthe Chinese cultural values, and critiqued the American racist notions, he has also conveyed thehealing power of myth to help Casey confront her identity predicament during puberty.Accordingly, Yep’s unique connotation of cultural identity is presented through hismythical narrative. For an ethnic group between two cultures, the identity of Chinese Americans not onlyrelies on nation and race, but also transforms with the changing cultural environment.Through the story of Casey’s identity development, Laurence Yep believes that the fluidityof cultural identity would make contributions to taking in cultural diversity and eliminatinginter-group discrimination. More importantly, it leads the Chinese Americans to reexaminethe traditional Chinese culture and to have a comprehensive knowledge about their identitiesin handling the multicultural relationship.