The Interracial Family Members' Identity Crises In Everything I Never Told You

Celeste Ng is a talented and creative Chinese American writer,and her debut novel Everything I Never Told You has aroused public attention and gained great success.It was recognized by Amazon's editorial team as “The Best Book” of Amazon's online retailer's 1ist of 2014.The novel starts from the death of a 16-year-old girl in an interracial family in 1970 s,and while the investigation into the case is being conducted,the family members recall and reflect their life,and the family's living conditions,as well as the causes and the results of the incident are revealed in detail before the readers too.In the work every member of the family suffers from different kinds of identity crises,which can be regarded as one cause to the tragedy of the family.And this thesis is to probe the identity crises and analyze the causes of the crises.This thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter is an introduction of this thesis,in which the present author gives a general survey on the novelist Celeste Ng,her literature career and achievements,the gist of Everything I Never Told You,and the theories about identity,identity crisis and the concept of identity crisis defined in this thesis.A literature review is also put forward here about the research of the novel abroad and at home.The second chapter specifically deals with the exhibitions of the family members' identity crises,analyzing them in detail.The third chapter explores the causes that led to the identity crisis in detail in such different aspects as racialism,trauma memory,psychological causes and communication causes.The fourth chapter analyzes different ways the characters used to cope with their identity crises.And the fifth chapter is the conclusion,further discussing the research significance and the gains obtained through analyzing this work.In the work Everything I Never Told You,the identity crises that the members in the interracial family suffered consisted of the identity crisis that the members could not fit in the American society,the identity crisis caused by the disharmonious relationships of the love and the family life,the identity crisis caused by the failure and the lack of the feeling of achievements,with different causes.The crises led to the disharmony of the family and the tragedy of the elder daughter Lydia.Fortunately,after the incident of Lydia,the other family members reflected the life and the living conditions,and saved the family from breaking up.Through probing and analyzing the family members' identity crises from different aspects and in various causes,we can understand Celeste Ng's feelings of caring for the weak people and the minorities.We can perceive the implications to the present life as well,i.e.we should hold appropriate attitudes towards family,children,dreams and ideals,children's education,and communication with others.