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Chinatown: Chinese Culture Complex of Chinese American Writers

Author: ZhengXiaoFeng
Tutor: WuXiaoNi；YouJiaZhong
School: Guangxi Normal University
Course: Comparative Literature and World Literature
Keywords: Chinatown Chinese American writers Chinese culture complex
CLC:
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2006
Downloads: 488
Quote: 1
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Abstract

Chinatown is the community in which Chinese Americans reside. It is their foothold for first coming to America. Chinatown’s history is as long as the history of Chinese American emigration. Since Chinese American writers made their voices in American literature, Chinatown has always been presented to works written by Chinese American writers. Chinese tradition (cultural materials) and American culture (inborn soil) has brought about the naissance of the Chinatown World in Chinese American Literature. Chinatown has been not only the place where those stories had occurred, most importantly, but also the lifestyle and culture that differs greatly from American mainstream society. It also has been a concentrated Chinese cultural sight in foreign space.The old Chinese Americans brought their family, life and cultural tradition into American land and lived in Chinatown like a snail. For them, Chinatown afforded cultural nutrition they need. Chinatown is China. Most Chinese American writers were born in America. They are living or had lived in Chinatown. Chinatown is their real-life space and literary fanciful space. Compared with their parents, Chinese American writers accept American culture and education and do not hold on Chinatown tightly any more. Then they can be assimilated soon. But as a minority group, the cultural identity of Chinese Americans must be recognized by Chinese culture. For the sake of their parents and living surrounding, Chinese culture tradition has infiltrated into the new Chinese Americans.To Chinese American writers, it is Chinese culture that operates quietly when they use Chinese culture as their central writing material. Writing about Chinese culture has been an essential way of expressing the Chinese American sensibilities. Whether or not they are cognizant of it, we can say exactly that Chinese American writers have a strong Chinese culture complex. However, Chinese traditional culture developed very slowly in Chinatown closing environment. It had already been spaced out with its motherland and lagged behind. On the other hand, As a colony which was located in the conflicts of Eastern and Western cultures and sought for the doctrine of living and acclimatization, Chinese American writers can’t abreact freely. Therefore, Chinatown culture in Chinese American literature is different from Chinese culture in its motherland. Chinatown has either contained common recognition or comprised only individual experience.As a product of the world migration phenomenon, and under the global trend of multiculturalism, Chinese American literature has received far more attention from literary circles since the 1990s. Asian American literary scholar Elaine H. Kim pointed out, Chinese American writings function as a social statement and historical documents, it reaches beyond the realms of literary merit and artistic values. To an individual, any complexes in his heart can be ascribed to the real emotional hurt in the course of his life. In Chinatown cultural flying land Chinese American writers are entangled between the two heterogeneous cultures. Their ambivalent emotion has been presented during the process of seeking for the certainty of their identities. Chinatown is just like a knit that can’t be cut and rearranged. It hovers over their hearts and becomes the overstock. So it is a meaningful job to quest for the writing forms and reading forms of texts and cast back Chinese Americans story in foreign land, then study how their cultural complexes has been presented in their texts.This thesis gives some examples of Chinatown life in Chinese American Literature as a cut-in point. It resolves the interrelationship between Chinatown and Chinese American literature. Chinatown has become self-conscious cultural code that possesses strong cultural identity and contains the writers’individual idiodynamic trend. Chinatown has agglomerated Chinese American writers’Chinese culture complex.In this paper chapter 1 concentrates on Chinese Americans story in heterogeneous cultural context and Chinatown as a real historical and realistic context. Chapter 2 covers some Chinese American writers, such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Jade Snow Wong, Louis Chu and so on. It shows the intention of the cultural code in Chinatown text the cultural characteristic of Chinatown in texts and observes the interrelationship between Chinatown and Chinese American literature. Chapter 3 explains why Chinese American writers use Chinatown for catharsis in their novels. Chapter 4 represents briefly that Chinatown has changed and Chinese American writers of the time have transferred their writing centers. Under the promotion of multiculturalism, Chinese American and Chinese American Literature is striving to exceed Chinatown limit and step into the American mainstream society. But the cultural complex will go along with Chinese American writers’career, and Chinatown will never disappear in Chinese American novels.

Chinatown: Chinese Culture Complex of Chinese American Writers

Abstract

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