A Postcolonial Interpretation Of The Identity Construction Of Three Chinese American Generations In Bone

Fae Myenne Ng(1956-)has become one of the new outstanding Chinese American novelists after the noted writers like Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan.In 1993,she published her first work Bone and received immediate responses.This excellent work got highly praised by the literary critics.The novel shows the history and reality of Chinese immigrants by the story of a Chinese American family in Chinatown,San Francisco,concerning the fact that Chinese Americans suffered racial discrimination,and keeping Chinese tradition and accepting American culture caused many kinds of generation gap between early Chinese immigrants and young Chinese Americans.Although Chinese Americans are quite different those American Indians and Hottentots who were once the slaves of imperialism,in their daily life they confront with the same troubles as American Indians and Hottentots: missing of historical memories,encountering cultural identity crisis,their edged position compared with mainstream culture.Thus postcolonial criticism is applies to the interpretation of Chinese American literary works.This thesis will adapt post-colonialism to explore the dynamic identity constructing process of the three generations in Ng's famous novel Bone.This thesis insists that because their different experiences in American society,the three Chinese American generations hold different attitudes towards their cultural identity: some want to revert to their origin and be a passing passenger and others want to take root in America and become a real American.No matter what kind of attitude they hold,only by struggling through the awkward situation between Chinese culture and American culture can Chinese Americans exactly define and construct their cultural identities.Grandpa Leong,one of the first Chinese immigrants,adhered to Chinese traditions and failed to realize his desire for returning his bones to China despite his hard work throughout his life.The second generation,growing up during the social transition period,could neither get rid of the first generation's influence nor escape from the oppression and discrimination of mainstream culture in American society,they are trying their best to construct their identity.The new generation has been receiving American culture and education ever since they were born.From Chinatown and their parents they know something about Chinese culture,which provokes them to think about their identity.Chinatown,to a certain degree,can be regarded as the traditional Chinese culture.It is of no use to their identity construction if Chinese Americans blindly adhere to traditional culture or blindly escape from it.Only by accepting the two aspects of their cultural identity,Chinese Americans can solve their identity confusion and construct their own independent,proper cultural identity.