Angela's Ashes:Identity Construction In Diaspora

Angela's Ashes is an autobiographical memoir written by the Irish-American writer Frank McCourt,which records McCourt's emigrant experience from New York to Ireland and finally return to America.Since publication in 1996,the memoir receives both literary and commercial success.However,some critics,especially Irish critics accuse this book of using Irish stereotypes and cliches,and of exaggerating and even fabricating the author's childhood inflict to meet the American readers'expectation of the idealization of American culture.Nevertheless,McCourt defenses himself from the differences of genres,highlighting that memoir is not autobiography and Angela's Ashes is based on his impression of his life.Therefore it doesn't need to follow the autobiographical rules of sticking to the fact faithfully and chronologically.Finally Susan Vice tends to regard Angela's Ashes as "misery memoir" and in this genre McCourt purposely combines fictionality in its historical narrative when he recalls his miserable childhood.Vice considers the book as the founding of the genre and later the term "misery memoir" is widely accepted and McCourt is celebrated as"the father of misery memoir".Treating the combination of fictionality and historical narrative in the genre of misery memoir as the point of departure,this thesis will deem Angela's Ashes as a constructed literary text and put it under the contemporary context of reevaluating Irish diaspora to explore how Frank McCourt in this constructed literary text shapes his hybrid diasporic identity and how he purposely combines fictionality in his historical narrative to demonstrate and highlight his struggle between Irish culture and American culture.McCourt's textual construction does not put American culture on a superior position than Irish culture.Instead,it embodies the influence of the new vane of reevaluating emigration cultural heritage.McCourt's endeavor demonstrates the charm of Irish culture,and at the same time embraces the flaws and weaknesses of Irish culture.What's more,McCourt depicts a moving story of young Frank,his struggle and growth between the two cultures.Besides the introduction and conclusion,this thesis is divided into three parts The first chapter focuses on how McCourt's father Malachy employs Irish heroic mythology of Cuchulain and nationalist rebel songs to shape Frank's "Irish"masculinity.The "Irishness" Malachy believes is a narrowed definition which emphasizes the militant nationalism,heroic masculinity and Catholic martyrdom.The second chapter is on McCourt's deconstruction of his father's failed masculinity.Disappointed about his father's irresponsibility,he rejects his father's nationalist songs,embraces the American jazz music,and emulates Hollywood western cowboys and gangsters to shape his own masculinity.Chapter three explores Frank's struggle and growth between Irish and American culture.McCourt fictionalizes two contrasting sexual relations with the Irish girl and the American woman,to demonstrate the contrast between the sexual conservatism and repression in Limerick and sexual freedom and emancipation in America.Moreover,the two relations show Frank's struggle between family responsibility and individual freedom.In conclusion,McCourt frees himself from the classic autobiographical convention,and makes bold efforts to fictionalize his life story.McCourt,by exploiting enduring national images to juxtapose and contrast Irish and American cultures which constitute his diasporic identity,has achieved a better understanding and reevaluation of his hybrid identity.McCourt's reconsideration of his identity fits to the mainstream of the reevaluation of the Irish diaspora since the late twentieth century,which partly explains the commercial success of the book.His critique of the social,cultural and religious conditions in the "dark age" Ireland in the 1930s to 1940s consequently becomes the antithesis of the Celtic Tiger contemporary Ireland,which shows that McCourt demolishes the homogeneous "Irishness" and embraces the cosmopolitan contemporary "Irishness".