Strategic Representations of Chinese Cultural Elements in Maxine Hong Kingston's and Amy Tan's Works
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School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts When Tiger Mothers Meet Sugar Sisters: Strategic Representations of Chinese Cultural Elements in Maxine Hong Kingston's and Amy Tan's Works Sheng Huang This thesis is presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Curtin University December 2017 Declaration To the best of my knowledge and belief this thesis contains no material previously published by any other person except where due acknowledgment has been made. This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university. Signature: …………………………………………. Date: ………………………... i Abstract This thesis examines how two successful Chinese American writers, Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan, use Chinese cultural elements as a strategy to challenge stereotypes of Chinese Americans in the United States. Chinese cultural elements can include institutions, language, religion, arts and literature, martial arts, cuisine, stock characters, and so on, and are seen to reflect the national identity and spirit of China. The thesis begins with a brief critical review of the Chinese elements used in Kingston’s and Tan’s works, followed by an analysis of how they created their distinctive own genre informed by Chinese literary traditions. The central chapters of the thesis elaborate on how three Chinese elements used in their works go on to interact with American mainstream culture: the character of the woman warrior, Fa Mu Lan, who became the inspiration for the popular Disney movie; the archetype of the Tiger Mother, since taken up in Amy Chua’s successful book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother; and Chinese style sisterhood which, I argue, is very different from the ‘sugar sisterhood’ sometimes attributed to Tan’s work. The final chapter is a discussion of the literary influences of Kingston and Tan on two younger authors, Marilyn Chin and Lisa See. I argue that the use of the Chinese elements in Kingston’s and Tan’s narratives can be regarded as a writing strategy to articulate resistance against racial stereotypes; this strategy in turn has opened up space for both Chinese culture and Chinese American writers to gain access to and interact with mainstream society in the West, even as, paradoxically, these narratives may also be seen as simultaneously reinforcing stereotypes. In this thesis, I aim to achieve a new reading, informed by an interdisciplinary approach which combines both literary and cultural studies, of how, in Kingston’s and Tan’s works, Chinese elements are represented and metamorphosed, and in turn become enticing to Westerners and lead to their adaptation as popular cultural phenomena in the United States. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor John Curtin Distinguished Professor Suvendrini Perera for her expertise and tireless work throughout my thesis, as well as my co- supervisor Dr. Qian Gong for her help and encouragement. I feel privileged to have had the honour of being supervised by my two supervisors who are so professional and insightful, and what is more important, who care for the students. I also appreciate the support and friendship from my colleagues both in Australia and China, including: Dr. Chris Lewis, Professor Shi Jianhua, Carol Chen, Christina Bi, Cindy Zhao, Dr. Liu Xiaojuan, Dr. Liu Liming and all my friends. Most importantly, I thank my parents who have been supporting me for so many years. iii Notation of Chinese Characters In referencing Chinese sources such as book titles and proper names in this thesis, I adopt the pinyin system since it is the standardised usage in mainland China. However, if these sources have been mentioned in other forms, such as the Wades-Giles system in the books I quote, I leave them as is and add pinyin after the original quotations as explanations if necessary. For some classics well-known to Westerners, such as The Art of War, I use the English version directly without pinyin or Chinese characters to avoid repetitions. I use Chinese characters when pinyin or English versions alone cannot provide with accurate information. iv Table of Contents Declaration ................................................................................................................................ i Abstract .....................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. iii Notation of Chinese Characters ............................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................... v Table of Figures ........................................................................................................................ vi Introduction: How to Win without Fighting............................................................................. 1 Chapter 1. A Critical Review of Kingston’s and Tan’s Chinese Cultural Representations ...... 23 Chapter 2. Kingston’s and Tan’s Cross-genre Writing............................................................ 46 Chapter 3. Mulan’s Trip to the West and Back ...................................................................... 71 Chapter 4. Tiger Mother, Burning Bright ............................................................................... 96 Chapter 5. Yellow Sisterhood ............................................................................................... 122 Chapter 6. Version 2.0: Two Updated Works ...................................................................... 148 Conclusion: From Honey Pot to Teapot? ............................................................................. 172 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 179 v Table of Figures Figure 1: Kelly Blaire and Jon Shireman. Front Cover of Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen. 2009, Printed Image. Source: Figure reproduced from (Blaire and Shireman 2009). .......... 152 Figure 2: Hunan Provincial Museum, Folding Fan with Inscription ‘Jie Xia Hao Qing Yi’ (Forging Sincere Friendship) in Nüshu Script of Jiangyong County. 2010, Digital Image. Available from: Hunan Provincial Museum (Human province Museum 2010).................... 161 vi Introduction: How to Win without Fighting During the summer break in 2005, in my hometown Hangzhou, China, I first encountered Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, just before I started my Master’s degree in American literature. I read the book as a general reader as I knew nothing about literary criticism at that time. I was mostly fascinated by the second chapter, ‘White Tigers’; a similar response to that of many of her American readers: Kingston once complained that the Americans pick this chapter as their favourite out of their oriental fantasy (Kingston 1982, 57). I had not really read any Chinese American text before, and Kingston’s narrative seemed so unique to me. The story in ‘White Tigers’ looked familiar but strange at the same time. I was quite confused as to whether Kingston had borrowed the legend of a Chinese heroine Hua Mulan1; indeed, I thought the character more of Indian origin when she described the rabbit’s sacrifice for the narrator on the mountain. The story of Hua Mulan that I learned from my middle school textbook when I was growing up in China is quite brief, and it contains no such fancy fairy-tale style adventures as in Kingston’s version. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club has been more popular among Chinese readers because some excerpts of the book have been selected in English textbooks in China since the 1990s. I watched the movie version of The Joy Luck Club in a cross-cultural communication course in 2006. I did not really understand why our teacher, an Italian, showed us this movie, but some scenes were quite impressive to me. For example, An- mei’s mother has to cut a piece of flesh from her arm as a medicine for her dying mother to show her filial piety. I had no idea whether or not this was a Chinese tradition, since I had never heard about it, but I have to admit that it was its exoticism that attracted me, even though I was supposed to know more about Chinese culture than the Italian teacher. These were my initial response to Kingston’s and Tan’s works when I was still quite ignorant about literary studies. I find it interesting that it was these strange but familiar Chinese cultural elements that caught my attention. If these are Chinese cultural 1 In Mandarin, we pronounce it as Hua Mulan, while Kingston uses Fa Mu Lan, a dialect version of the name. In the Disney animation, the character’s family name is not mentioned. I use different versions of spelling in the following thesis according to context. 1 elements, then why did I feel so confused about their origins? And why did Kingston and Tan present them to Westerners? Perhaps this was my initial motivation to start this research, although these questions were rather vague and not academic. My curiosity about the two Chinese American writers, Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan, gradually turned into my research interest. After working in a university for many years, I decided to become a student again and research how Kingston and Tan use Chinese cultural elements as a strategy to challenge stereotypes of Chinese Americans in the United