Trauma And Recovery: Female Identity Construction Within The Works Of Chinese-american Literature In English

In contemporary days,Chinese-American literature in English has become a significant branch of American literature,which has been experiencing a multi-development process and consequentially drawn on immense both domestic and overseas research interests.Female description plays a pivotal role in the figure description of Chinese-American literature in English.Belonging to either the first generation or second generation of Chinese immigrants,females are severely constraint by Chinese feudal ethics and concepts.In the meantime,they inevitably suffer from the harsh cultural conflicts between West and East as well as suffocating racial discrimination when making a living on the exotic land.Some of them cannot shake off the pain and melancholy,while a large number of them try various approaches to heal their psychological trauma,and eventually achieve identity recognition and construction.Numerous remarkable Chinese-American writers elaborately display female immigrants’ tough while grand identity construction process in their works,with their ingenuity and insight,along with sympathy to females’ status.Trauma theory was inaugurated by the eminent psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.As numerous renowned scholars constantly explore and enrich it,it has developed into a multidisciplinary theory at present.Guided by the trauma theory,this research aims to conduct an identity construction analysis on six classic and representative female figures as Ruth,Lu Ling;Kingston,Brave Orchid;Leila,Nina,who are respectively selected out from Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter(2003),Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior(1976)and Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone(1993)-the three distinguished and influential novels within the field of Chinese-American literature in English which have continually drawn on much scholarly attention and sparked both intensive and extensive academic researches.As a matter of fact,those female immigrants’ hard life in America caused by suffering from feudal ethics,patriarchy,racism and sexism actually reflects the cultural trauma,family trauma,personal trauma,etc that females are miserably haunted by,which matches the subject matter of the trauma theory.This research is primarily connected with a series of branch theories like traumatic symptom,trauma recovery,intergenerational trauma,trauma of war,aiming to conduct an intensive analysis on females’ diverse traumatic events,traumatic experiences,traumatic syndromes and trauma recoveries reflected in the works of Chinese-American literature in English.Most importantly,it aims at exploring how female Chinese-Americans,belonging to both the ethnic minority group and the social inferior group as well as having different family backgrounds and personal stories,are gradually making efforts to achieve identity construction in the process of confronting with trauma and healing trauma,along with displaying females’ great bravery and tenacity of pursuing identity recognition and construction when they are trapped in alienation and oppression,misery and melancholy.