Searching For An Authentic Self

As an emerging Chinese American writer in the 21st century,Celeste Ng(1980-)rises to unprecedented fame after the publication of her first representative novel Everything I Never Told You(2014),which,once released,beating nearly a hundred famous authors’works,ranks the best-seller of the year in the US and has received numerous praise and endorsements worldwide.Unlike the predecessors such as Maxine Hong Kinston and Amy Tam whose works mainly focus on Chinese American immigrants or descendants’struggle in the cultural dilemma,this rising star in the Chinese-American literary circle of the new era does not solely devote herself to exploring the racial issues of Chinese Americans in the white society but more importantly,exhibits a philosophical thinking of the common existential issues of people in different cultural backgrounds.So,this thesis will conduct an analysis of Ng’s Everything I Never Told You based on Sartre’s existentialism,probing into the existential crises of the Chinese Americans,the hybrid and the white by touching upon the universal human experience such as the love and loss of an individual and the family drama in a sweet disguise revealed in the novel,and further excavating how they search for their authentic selves in the complex American society.This thesis is divided into five parts.The first part gives a brief introduction to Celeste Ng,her background information and representative works as well as key concepts extracted from Sartre’s existentialism which serve as the theoretical foundation of the study.And research results and trends of Everything I Never Told You both at home and abroad are sorted out to clarify the research significance of this thesis.Chapter One explores the predestined and uncontrollable barriers to character’s achievement of their authentic selves.To be specific,characters are confronted with the adverse aspects of the pre-given“facticity”since they are born,to illustrate,the identities as Chinese Americans in white society,as females in the patriarchal society,and as the mixed-blood in the pathological family of origin.On the other hand,they are inevitably exposed to“the look”of the other as long as they are alive,thus passively evaluated and defined by the look of people from the racist society,the patriarchal society,and the inner family,which put them in different disadvantageous positions in their processes of self-recognition and pose obstacles to their journey to the authentic selves.Chapter Two digs out how characters fall into“bad faith”and descend to the unauthentic existential state.Imprisoned by the predetermined disadvantages,characters fail to realize they are capable of liberating themselves from those pre-given limitations so that they mechanically impersonate different hypocritical roles given before birth.On the other hand,under the ubiquitous look of other people,they overvalue others’perceptions of them and are enslaved by the judgment of others,thus being distorted into different forms of“being-for-others”,namely,being-for-the-white,being-for-male-chauvinists,and being-for-parents.Chapter Three delves into the characters’final journey to achieving their authentic selves.Suffocating in bad faith,characters first resort to inexpedient attempts to step out of the misery by turning to a derailment,looking for the scapegoat or hurting the beloved family to counteract the excruciating pain,which turns out not only a futile struggle but an aggravation of their tragedy.Fortunately,they come to the realization that the real deliverance requires the abandonment of“bad faith”.They refuse to be the prisoner of“facticity”any longer,embrace“existence precedes essence”and resolve to make more pleasant possibilities out of the unpleasant facticities.On the other hand,they no longer define or shape themselves for the sake of others,thus refocusing on being-for-themselves and exerting“subjectivity”which is previously annihilated by the look of the other.The last part comes the conclusion.Being neither a pure ethnic or feminist writer,Ng succeeds in elating her novel into a higher level by granting it a universal and realistic value.Her novel Everything I Never Told You highlights her great concern about the problems of human existence.The characters’search for their authentic selves in her creation runs parallel with the journey to authenticity in Sartre’s existentialism.Drawing inspiration from her personal experiences,she vividly depicts the existential issues of the Chinese Americans,the hybrid and the white in the American society in which she grew up.Although the selection of her characters and the setting of the context has its particularity,Ng reveals the universal existential dilemmas of mankind which are still the concerns today,and strike a chord with readers of different backgrounds.So,the novel enables its readers to exert self-introspection about their own existential states so as to avoid being trapped in“bad faith”.Meanwhile,it facilitates its reader’s construction of their authentic selves in spite of confronting various uncontrollably predestined barriers.