Double Face And Double Identity:Cultural Interpretation Of Aimee Liu’s Face

In her semi-autobiographic novel Face,Amiee E.Liu tells the growing-up story of Maibelle Chung from a Chinatown girl to a photographic artist in the American main society.With one-quarter of Chinese blood from her father who is half Chinese and half American,she looks more Caucasian than Chinese.Growing up in Chinatown she aspires to identify herself as a Chinese,eager to be an insider of the Chinese group around her.She is keenly aware of her Chinese face behind her American face,but her aspiration to foreground her Chinese face is often thwarted with traumatic experiences in Chinatown which denies and rejects her because of her American face.The complexity and subtlety of her double face is coupled with her dilemma of her dual cultural identity.Her Caucasian face does not affirm her American identity.In the American mainstream society she is “abnormal” or “eccentric”.Her dream is to marry Johnny,her buddy,and a 100% American who wants her to fly up in the sky with imaginary wings.Johnny crashes and dies in a dramatic attempt to fly from a cliff without wings,leaving her in a place of nowhere.This thesis looks at the paradoxes and contradictions in Maibelle Chung’s life as a Chinese descendant of mixed blood growing up in Chinese America with double face and dual cultural identity.The analysis focuses on her final return to Chinatown after running away from it and cutting herself off from everything Chinese that marks her growth to excavate her family secrets and her memory while following her family route back to China.In exploring her journey from Chinatown and back to the American mainstream society,this thesis suggests a wholeness forming in her cultural identity as a Chinese American.The analysis draws on the face theory and Bildungsroman to culturally interpret Maibelle’s cultural growth to maturity.This thesis illuminates the ways Maibelle finally embraces her Chinese American identity marked by her double face and dual cultural identity through self-salvation and empowerment that release her repressed memory and imprisoned self in nightmares.