Diaspora vs. Immigration in Chinese American Cultural Criticism: Mulberry and Peach and Thousand Pieces of Gold
Resource
中外文學, 34(9), 237-264
Journal
中外文學
Journal Volume
34
Journal Issue
9
Pages
237-264
Date Issued
2006-02
Date
2006-02
Author(s)
Huang, S.C.
Abstract
Many Asian American critics have noted western feminist critics' penchant for the third-world damsel in distress: feminist scholars in the West have preferred third-world narratives where women in underdeveloped or developing countries suffer from gender oppression and economic exploitation unawares but out of a stroke of luck get enlightened and rescued through encounters with the first world. In such narratives, the differences between the U.S. and the third world are reduced to the contrast between advancement and underdevelopment, liberation and oppression, as well as affluence and paucity. While such narratives sing praise of the U.S., Hualing Nieh's novel Mulberry and Peach and Ruthanne Lum McCunn's biographical novel Thousand Pieces of Gold differ from them by foregrounding the selectivity of U.S. national identity and the exclusivity of its nation building project. Lalu/Nathoy in Thousand Pieces of Gold eventually obtains her legal residency by marrying a white man, whereas Mulberry/Peach ends up roaming across the continent—her guerrilla wandering bespeaks the predicament of an uprooted Chinese exile. The trans-Pacific voyages of Lalu/Polly and Mulberry/Peach illustrate two critical approaches in Chinese American studies: the immigrant mentality and the diasporic perspective. While Chinese immigrants gravitate towards the U.S. nation state and may help promote the American dream myth, the Chinese diasporic perspective may serve to question hegemonic U.S. national culture, although it may also be symptomatic of Sinocentrism.
Subjects
華裔離散族群
華裔移民
美國建國敘述
弱勢模範論述
圓滿論述
美國屬性
女遊者
《桑青與桃紅》
《千金》
Chinese Diaspora
Chinese immigrants
U.S. nation-building narratives
model minority discourse
discourse of wholeness
Americanness
women travelers
Mulberry and Peach
Thousand Pieces of Gold
SDGs
Type
journal article
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