Theory and Practice in Language Studies Contents - Academy ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

ISSN 1799-2591Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 3, No. 6, pp. 1026-1033, June 2013© 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.doi:10.4304/tpls.3.6.1026-1033Analysis of the Myths, Photographs and Laws inChina MenMinglan ZhangForeign Language Department, Huaiyin Institute of Technology, 223003, Jiangsu, ChinaFade WangForeign Language Department, Huaiyin Institute of Technology, 223003, Jiangsu, ChinaAbstract—The presentation of myths, photographs and laws in China Men, thematically related to ChineseAmerican immigration stories, is an important strategy to reconstruct Chinese American history. By citingphotographs and presenting law, Kingston reclaims her male ancestors’ past and subverts the monologue ofAmerican official history. By rewriting myths, Kingston exposes the dilemma of Chinese Americans anddeconstructs a series of American myths such as the myth of America as a melting pot, the myth of GoldMountain, the myth of freedom and democracy; these myths provide a way for Kingston to write ChineseAmericans into American history.Index Terms—China Men, rewriting myths, citing photographs, presenting law, deconstruct western grandnarrative, reconstruct Chinese American mythic historyI. INTRODUCTIONMaxine Hong Kingston is one of the most successful Chinese American writers. Up to now, Kingston has publishedfour works of fiction and non-fiction, namely, The Woman Warrior (1976), China Men (1980), and Tripmaster Monkey:His Fake Book (1989), The Fifth Book of Peace (2003), plus a collection of prose, Hawaii One Summer (1978) . TheWoman Warrior tells of a second –generation girl‘s groping for a viable female identity as a Chinese American in thelate 1960s. The book was a great success, and in 1976 won the National Book Critics Circle Award for the bestnonfiction. China Men, a companion piece to The Woman Warrior, has males in Kingston‘s family as the chiefcharacters. While her first book honors the women of Kingston‘s family, China Men celebrates the lives andaccomplishments of the males in her family. Again her literary talents were lauded. On its release, the book wasimmediately named to the American Library Association‘s Notable Books List, and won the National Book Award fornonfiction.China Men is composed of six distinct but related principal stories about the men in Kingston‘s family. ―The Fatherfrom China‖ is the story about Kingston‘s BaBa (father), in which Kingston tries to imagine the essential events of herfather‘s life in China from his auspicious birth and through his education, to his emigration to the Gold Mountain. ―TheGreat Grandfather of the Sandalwood Mountain‖ is about the adventures of Bak Gong (great grandfather) on theHawaiian sugar cane plantation as a contract worker. ―The Grandfather of the Sierra Nevada Mountain‖ tells of theheroic story of Ah Gong (grandfather) during the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad. ―The Making ofMore Americans‖ deals with identity problem facing Chinese Americans. Father returns in ―The American Father‖ as anew American with a house and business after years of struggle. The book ends with ―The Brother in Vietnam‖. This isa section devoted to the American-born generations who joined the American army and won the solid position for theirfamily in America.One typical structural feature of China Men is the juxtaposition of stories with vignettes. Each principal story aboutthe males in Kingston‘s family is framed with one or two vignettes, which cover short tales, myths, fragments of law,and news reports. These vignettes, varying in length, origin, and theme, are ingeniously arranged. However, theirfunction was once ignored or misinterpreted by some critics who criticized that these myths were so arbitrarily adaptedthat they totally lost their true features and made readers confused and annoyed, or that they were loose episodes,having no thematic cohesiveness with the historical narratives. But recently, the myths and historical facts in the bookhave aroused increasing interest of many critics. Robert G. Lee points out that ―for Kingston, myths necessarily rebuilt,have a strategic value in helping to analyze contemporary events. She recognizes that the power of myth resides in itscapacity to be recontextualized and inscribed with new meanings‖ (Lee, 1991, p. 59). Yuan Yuan states that myths inChina Men ―function as a semiotic empowerment in the process of identity formation‖ (Yuan, 1999, p. 292). Gao Yan,by approaching the myths from the perspective of the biographical stories of the Hong family, rearranges them into fourthemes in relation to the main stories, namely, racial oppression, claiming the land, breaking silence, and culturaldisplacement ( Gao,1996,p.53-95).The author of this thesis agrees with these critics‘ viewpoints, and from the perspective of history-writing, to theauthor‘s mind, the myths, laws and photographs which run parallel to the family stories thematically reinforce and© 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER
THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE STUDIES 1027complement the stories, are indispensible parts of creating Chinese American history. Based on the previous studies, theauthor of this thesis tries to analyze the myths, laws and photographs in China Men, and reveals how Kingstonreconstructs Chinese American history through re-reading facts and rewriting myths.II. RE-READING FACTSA. Presenting LawsBesides retelling the heroic stories of her male ancestors through her memory and imagination, Kingston throughoutChina Men furnishes many factual materials which include laws, photographs and newspaper reports. These factualmaterials, combined with the family stories, pose a challenge to the authenticity and authority of mainstream Americanhistory.After recounting grandfather Ah Goong‘s stories, and right in the middle of the book, Kingston with little commentinserts a chapter titled ―The Laws‖, which takes the form of a chronicle and enumerates the various U. S. regulationsand laws discriminating against Chinese Americans from the Burlingame Treaty of 1868 to the immigration law of 1978.Being baldly substantial documentary material, this chapter is criticized by some to be anomalous with the variegatednarrative in the rest of the book. However, it is recognized and praised by such critics as King-Kok Cheung, DonaldGoellnicht, and Shan Dexin. The author of this thesis agrees with those critics who think that this chapter serves wellthe form and content of the book. Firstly, this chapter is inserted by the author to instruct American people who areignorant of the Chinese American history and content to read her texts from the vantage point of Orientalism. AsKingston states:The mainstream culture doesn‘t know the history of Chinese Americans, which has been written well. The ignorancemakes a tension for me, and in the new book [China Men] I just couldn‘t take it anymore. So all of a sudden, right in themiddle of the stories, plunk—there is an eight-page section of pure history. It starts with the Gold Rush and goes rightthrough the various exclusion acts, year by year. (Kim, 1982, p. XVII)Secondly, this chapter provides the general American reading public with a brief chronicle of oppression againstwhich the heroic deeds of the idealized fathers can be judged. Quite different from immigration histories of otherminorities, early Chinese American history was inseparable from American laws. Discriminatory laws had accompaniedthe whole immigration process of Chinese Americans and manifested as its distinctive features. Therefore, Kingston‘srecounting these laws is of special significance to deal with Chinese American history. By presenting her ancestors‘stories against American discriminatory laws, Kingston not only exposes the harsh political environments under whichChinese Americans were forced to labor for more than a century, but makes her historical stories more resonant and real.As Cheung points out, ―Kingston‘s sketches of China Men in the Hawaiian fields and on the railroads may not be‗factual‘, but they are surely truer than the reductive images inscribed in the merciless canons‖ (Cheung, 1993, p.118).Thirdly, this chapter embodies the climax of racism and the domineering voices that Kingston‘s talk-story seeks toconfound. As Foucault notes in Power/Knowledge, ―Law [is] the principal mode of representation of power‖ (Foucault,1980, p. 141), and the widespread national racism against the Chinese will inevitably lead to and ultimately be enforcedby laws. Thus Kingston‘s representation of the laws is a straightforward, and forceful way of exposing the America‘sdiscrimination against Chinese Americans.Finally, the style of the chapter and its location in the book helps reinforce the theme of the book. As Goellnichtstates, ―The Laws‖ is ironic in three senses. First, the irony surfaces from the facts themselves, as in the justaposition:―The United States and the Emperor of China cordially recognize the inherent and inalienable right of man to changehis home and allegiance ….[but] 1868, the year of the Burlingame Treaty, was the year 40,000 Chinese ancestry wereDriven Out‖ (p.152). ―Though the Chinese were filling and leveeing the San Joaquin Delta for thirteen cents a squareyard, building the richest agricultural land in the world, they were prohibited from owning land or real estate‖(p.153).Secondly, the narrative of this chapter carries an ironic undertone by ―imitating the monological voice of authorizinghistory‖ and by ―uncover[ing] both the dullness of this voice and its deafness to other, competing voices, those of theminorities suffering legalized discrimination‖(Goellnicht,1992,p.196). Thirdly, there is irony in the position of thischapter. ―It occupies the middle of the book, a centric position that would appear to be one of (legalized) authority, yetthis centric authority of American laws is subverted and contested by ‗eccentric‘ or marginal, but richly imaginativestories of China Men that surrounds it‖ (p.197). Goellnicht illustrates that the stories of China Men, surrounding thischapter, do not strengthen the monological and monotonous authoritative discourse, but subvert it.Thus the above analysis shows that, in both style and content, the law in this chapter furnishes an essential strategy torewrite Chinese American history.B. Citing PhotographsIn addition to presenting the laws, Kingston also resorts to photographs as a strategy to reclaim her male ancestors‘past and to challenge the status of official history.Traditionally, the photograph has been seen in western culture as a representation of nature, an unmediatedtranscription of reality into film. Just as Trinh T. Minh stated, ―The tyranny of the camera goes unchallenged‖(Zackodnik, 1997, p. 55). This notion of photography as veracity endows the photos with the capacity to prove, to eitherpresent factual evidence or stand as a fact itself. Because of the supposed truth value, the photograph is often used to© 2013 ACADEMY PUBLISHER
Page 3 and 4:
ISSN 1799-2591Theory and Practice i
Page 5 and 6:
THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE STU
Page 7:
THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE STU
Page 10 and 11:
872 THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE
Page 12 and 13:
Page 14 and 15:
Page 16 and 17:
Page 18 and 19:
Page 20 and 21:
Page 22 and 23:
Page 24 and 25:
Page 26 and 27:
Page 28 and 29:
Page 30 and 31:
Page 32 and 33:
Page 34 and 35:
عَ‏896 THEORY AND PRACTICE IN L
Page 36 and 37:
Page 38 and 39:
Page 40 and 41:
Page 42 and 43:
Page 44 and 45:
Page 46 and 47:
Page 48 and 49:
Page 50 and 51:
Page 52 and 53:
Page 54 and 55:
Page 56 and 57:
Page 58 and 59:
Page 60 and 61:
Page 62 and 63:
Page 64 and 65:
Page 66 and 67:
Page 68 and 69:
Page 70 and 71:
Page 72 and 73:
Page 74 and 75:
Page 76 and 77:
Page 78 and 79:
Page 80 and 81:
Page 82 and 83:
Page 84 and 85:
Page 86 and 87:
Page 88 and 89:
Page 90 and 91:
Page 92 and 93:
Mean of strategy954 THEORY AND PRAC
Page 94 and 95:
Page 96 and 97:
Page 98 and 99:
Page 100 and 101:
Page 102 and 103:
Page 104 and 105:
Page 106 and 107:
Page 108 and 109:
Page 110 and 111:
Page 112 and 113:
Page 114 and 115: 976 THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE
Page 120 and 121: ISSN 1799-2591Theory and Practice i
Page 138 and 139: 1000 THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAG
Page 214 and 215:
1076 THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAG
Page 216 and 217:
1078 THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAG
Page 219:
Call for Papers and Special Issue P
Page 222:
(Contents Continued from Back Cover
show all

Theory and Practice in Language Studies Contents - Academy ...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?