Subverting The Other's Image,Pursuing Identity Values

Wayson Choy,a famous contemporary Chinese Canadian writer,is praised as“the most talented story teller in Canada”.Born in Canada,his life experience in Vancouver's Chinatown gives him infinite writing material,inspiration and sense of mission.Choy publishes alternatingly novels and memories,which has made great contributions to the development of Chinese Canadian Literature.Choy's literary publications containing and representing profound traditional Chinese culture,are significant corpus for the study on Chinese Canadian Literature and Culture.All That Matters(2004)nominated for the Giller Prize.Through protagonist Kiam-Kim's struggle,the novel reflects an arduous course of the previous generation of Chinese immigrants who survived and struggled in Canada;it shows countless Chinese families not only have to adapt to new social culture,but also endeavor to preserve the Chinese traditions in the Canadian context by depicting the kinships between his family members.This thesis,with the concept of the Other as a standpoint,interprets All That Matters from the perspective of Orientalism.By analyzing the literary characterization and ideological connotations in the novel,the thesis illustrates Choy's aim at revealing Westerners' Oreintalism as well as the prejudice from thedescendants of older generations of Chinese Canadians to the old China and Chinese culture;it elaborates Choy's efforts through a broad vision and space of literary creation to stimulate readers' resonating and rethinking of the images in the novel to subvert Westerners' traditional stereotypes of Orientals,to challenge some Westerners' views of taking Orientals as the Other,so as to carry forward the spirits of Chinese Canadians persisting Chinese complex,inheriting Chinese culture,and pursuing identity values.This thesis further demonstrates the good wishes and visions of Chinese Canadians to construct harmonious ethnic relationships in Canadian multi-cultural context;their efforts and contributions to realize Canadian multi-culturalism have significant enlightenment to the harmonious development of multiple national and multi-cultural communities in the era of globalization.