Trauma Narrative And Its Features In Shawn Wong’s Homebase

Shawn Wong, born in 1949 Oakland, California, is a famous contemporary Chinese American writer and an English professor at the University of Washington. He also co-edited with Frank Chin, Jeffery Paul Chan and Lawson Fusao Inada the much-acclaimed landmark anthology that aimed to establish the tradition of Asian American literature--AIIIEEEEE! An Anthology of Asian American Writers. Homebase, being his debut novel, is an autobiographical prose fiction based on the author’s own experience. The book has drawn wide-spread attention since its first publication in 1979, winning successively the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and Washington State Governor’s Writers Day Award.Homebase is the coming of age story of Rainsford Chan in 1950 s and 60 s California. Orphaned at fifteen, his anxiety and loneliness have compelled him to embark on the journey to search for his ancestor’s footprint in America. Through his countless journeys in cars and planes, he has learned the forgotten history of his immigrant ancestors and has come to terms with his trauma. In the end, he has fulfilled the dream of four generations of his family by claiming America as his own.Including an introduction and a conclusion, this thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One first gives a brief introduction to the author and the plot of the novel and then moves on to give a brief account of a series of trauma theorists and their main ideas. The last part is the significance of the research. Chapter Two gives a brief review of studies concerning the author and the novel from home and abroad. Chapter Three discusses the trauma narrative in Homebase. Chapters Four is about the recovery process of the protagonist. Chapter Five gives a summary of the whole thesis.Using trauma theories, this thesis analyzes the text of the novel Homebase carefully and finds out that the novel is a fine example of trauma narrative. The trauma of the characters in the novel can roughly be divided into three categories, namely, trauma from racism, trauma from wars and trauma from family. Each trauma is narrated with different narrative techniques befitting the characteristics of traumatic memories, such as change of narrative perspective, non-linear narrative, illusions, dreams, fragmented narrative and so on. Based on Judith Herman’s trauma theory, the recovery process of trauma involves three stages. First is to name the problem and restore control, second is to tell the story and the last step is to transform the memory.Trauma theory provides a new perspective in interpreting the protagonist’s inner world in Homebase which is very helpful in analyzing the character’s psychological pressure, anxiety and trauma as a result of the outside environment. Using trauma theory as the theoretical basis, combined with careful textual analysis, this thesis hopes to contribute something new to the research of Shawn Wong’s Homebase and attract more attention to the traumatized community and trauma studies in literature.