Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Iowa, 1932. / Without thesis note. Bibliography: p. xxxii-xii.

Magister Artium - MA / The literature of the Chinese diaspora in America is marked by a tension between ancestral Chinese traditional culture and the modernity of Western culture. This thesis explores diaspora theory, as elaborated by Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha, Gabriel Sheffer and others to establish a framework for the analysis of key Chinese American literary works. Maxine Hong Kingston's seminal novel, The Woman Warrior (1975), will be analysed as an exemplary instance of diasporic identity, where the Chinese cultural heritage is reinterpreted and re-imagined from the point of view of an emancipated woman living in the West. A comparative analysis will be undertaken of Jade Snow Wong's The Fifth Chinese Daughter (1950) and Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club (1989) to identify links between the writers who have grappled with various forms of diasporic identity in their works. An important part of this analysis is the representation and adaptation of Chinese folklore and traditional tales in Chinese American literary works.

"'They Will Invent What They Need to Survive': Narrating Trauma in Contemporary Ethnic American Women's Fiction" analyzes novels by Octavia Butler, Phyllis Alesia Perry, Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, and Julia Alvarez through the lens of contemporary theories of trauma, tracing the ways in which survivors struggle to construct narratives that contain and make sense of their experiences. Many of the major theorists of trauma studies emphasize the impossibility of re-capturing traumatic events through creating narratives even while recognizing that the survivor's need to tell her story persists. In my project, however, I explore the ways in which the Kindred, Stigmata, Paradise, The Joy Luck Club, Sula, The Temple of My Familiar, and In the Time of the Butterflies extend theories that insist too readily on the survivor's inability to accurately or completely re-member by depicting characters who, despite difficulty, present narrative accounts of their painful memories. In my own readings of the texts, I emphasize that the complexities highlighted by these texts ultimately foster our deeper understanding of the traumatized subject and her attempts to empower herself through testimony.

Creative: Jongsarat is a full-length fictional novel set in Brunei. It follows the lives of two cousins as they struggle with the same decision over the course of one summer. Rijal, the black sheep of the family, must try to come to terms with his fears and his troubled past when he finds out his girlfriend is pregnant. Hana, the family's golden girl and hope for the future, fights to keep her own sins a secret as she faces losing her boyfriend to his growing love for God. Set against the backdrop of a country in which reputation and religion are inextricably intertwined, and in which traditional values are struggling to stay alive, Rijal and Hana must find a way to understand the future that they are fighting for. Jongsarat is fundamentally an exploration of the challenges traditional social and religious structures are facing as they struggle to shape modern-day Brunei. It is a study of how, when traditional culture is uninformed by the heart of religion, it leads to disenfranchisement and the hollowness of ritual. It is a story about the ways in which everyday families have to cope with the hopes and expectations each generation places on the next in an ever-changing world. Critical: By exploring the reasons why study of the religious trope has been so neglected in Chinese American literary study, this thesis seeks to understand the critical paradigms which have dominated and shaped Chinese American literary discourses. This thesis will do this by looking seriously at the history of the formation of Chinese American literature and critical study, and the ways in which it has been influenced by American social and political movements such as the feminist and civil rights movements. Having established the state of Chinese American literature and literary discourse, the thesis will then go on to examine the ways in which these external influences have caused grave misreadings which have severely limited the scope and understanding of critical discourse. This thesis will then correct these misreadings by using Amy Tan's works as a case study for performing a critical reading of the religious trope in order to open critical discourse up to new and alternative readings that will ensure the continuation of fresh, relevant and vibrant dialogue within Chinese American critical study.

O presente trabalho focaliza os processos de formação da identidade, observados em narrativas da escritora sino-americana Maxine Hong Kingston. Documentando as contradições e a fragmentação do sujeito, procura-se iluminar os vários sentidos de subjetividade presentes em uma pessoa de origem chinesa que vive nos Estados Unidos na época da pós-modernidade. O quadro teórico utilizado na análise desses processos é construído a partir da crítica sobre o romance pósmoderno e dos estudos culturais sobre a diáspora. Focaliza-se o livro de memórias da autora, The woman warrior – memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts, publicado pela primeira vez em 1976. Desde meados do século XVIII, um grande número de imigrantes asiáticos deslocou-se para os Estados Unidos, trazendo consigo seus próprios valores materiais e espirituais e seus distintos padrões de comportamento. A formação das gerações que cresceram nessa encruzilhada de culturas só poderia ser difícil e conflituosa. Esta dissertação procura descobrir, por um lado, como se efetivam os processos de identificação dos sino-americanos, visto que estão sujeitos a dois sistemas de valor diferentes e, por outro, como se articulam os diversos elementos culturais, tanto na constituição da identidade das personagens como na construção do romance. As narrativas de Maxine Hong Kingston revelam processos de hibridização, característicos de um autor diaspórico. / This dissertation deals with the processes of identity formation as observed in the works of the Chinese-American writer Maxine Hong Kingston, especially in her book The woman warrior – memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts, first published in 1976. The different meanings of subjectivity that can take shape in an American of Chinese descent, encompassing an individual’s contradictions and fragmentation, are analyzed. The theoretical framework is based on critics of postmodernism and on cultural studies about diasporas. Since the middle of the eighteenth century a great number of Asian immigrants moved to the United States, taking along with them their different values and behavior patterns. A person growing up in the intersection of cultures has to deal with conflicts and paradoxes, resulting in identities that are contradictory and fragmentary. This dissertation seeks to unravel, on one hand, the processes of identity formation among the Chinese-Americans, faced as they are by two distinct value systems. On the other hand, find out how the different cultural elements are articulated both in the identity formation of the characters and in the construction of the novel. The narratives of Maxine Hong Kingston reveal processes of hybridization, which are characteristic of a diasporic author.

O presente trabalho focaliza os processos de formação da identidade, observados em narrativas da escritora sino-americana Maxine Hong Kingston. Documentando as contradições e a fragmentação do sujeito, procura-se iluminar os vários sentidos de subjetividade presentes em uma pessoa de origem chinesa que vive nos Estados Unidos na época da pós-modernidade. O quadro teórico utilizado na análise desses processos é construído a partir da crítica sobre o romance pósmoderno e dos estudos culturais sobre a diáspora. Focaliza-se o livro de memórias da autora, The woman warrior – memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts, publicado pela primeira vez em 1976. Desde meados do século XVIII, um grande número de imigrantes asiáticos deslocou-se para os Estados Unidos, trazendo consigo seus próprios valores materiais e espirituais e seus distintos padrões de comportamento. A formação das gerações que cresceram nessa encruzilhada de culturas só poderia ser difícil e conflituosa. Esta dissertação procura descobrir, por um lado, como se efetivam os processos de identificação dos sino-americanos, visto que estão sujeitos a dois sistemas de valor diferentes e, por outro, como se articulam os diversos elementos culturais, tanto na constituição da identidade das personagens como na construção do romance. As narrativas de Maxine Hong Kingston revelam processos de hibridização, característicos de um autor diaspórico. / This dissertation deals with the processes of identity formation as observed in the works of the Chinese-American writer Maxine Hong Kingston, especially in her book The woman warrior – memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts, first published in 1976. The different meanings of subjectivity that can take shape in an American of Chinese descent, encompassing an individual’s contradictions and fragmentation, are analyzed. The theoretical framework is based on critics of postmodernism and on cultural studies about diasporas. Since the middle of the eighteenth century a great number of Asian immigrants moved to the United States, taking along with them their different values and behavior patterns. A person growing up in the intersection of cultures has to deal with conflicts and paradoxes, resulting in identities that are contradictory and fragmentary. This dissertation seeks to unravel, on one hand, the processes of identity formation among the Chinese-Americans, faced as they are by two distinct value systems. On the other hand, find out how the different cultural elements are articulated both in the identity formation of the characters and in the construction of the novel. The narratives of Maxine Hong Kingston reveal processes of hybridization, which are characteristic of a diasporic author.

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