On Chinese Americans' Identity Construction In China Men From The Perspective Of Memory Theory

As one of the most influential Chinese American writers in the United States,Maxine Hong Kingston(1940-)focuses on the influence of past and history on Chinese Americans.China Men,published in 1980,is the second masterpiece of Kingston,which tells the struggling history of four generations of Chinese American male immigrants in America.Based on Paul Connerton's theory of social memory and Jan Assmann's communicative memory and cultural memory,this thesis attempts to explore the process of identity construction of Chinese Americans by analyzing the different memories of the four generations of Kingston's family.The thesis is divided into five chapters.The first chapter briefly introduces Maxine Hong Kingston and China Men,summarizes the research at home and abroad,illustrates the theory of social memory,communicative memory and cultural memory,and states the thesis statement.Chapter Two,based on Connerton's “social memory”,dissects the general experience of the first-generation Chinese Americans' subjective identity construction.That is,from the crisis of subjective identity caused by being suppressed in “organised forgetting” to realizing the subjective identity construction by representing the truth of social memory.Chapter Three,under the theory of“communicative memory” by Jan Assmann,studies the ethnic identity construction process of the second generation.That is,from the bewilderment of identity in communicating with the white-dominated society to completing their ethnic identity construction by externalizing the communicative memory.Taking Assmann's cultural memory as the starting point,Chapter Four analyzes the cultural identity formation process of the new generation from the identity confusion caused by lacking cultural memory to completing cultural identity construction by inheriting the cultural memory.Chapter Five is the conclusion,which further indicates the significance of memory in identity construction as shown through Kingston's considerations on relationships between past,memory and identity.Memory promotes Chinese Americans' identification with the community and realizes their identity construction.