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"Talk-stories" in the Fictions of Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan by Hiu Wing Wong A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for' the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English and Comparative Literary Studies University of Warwick, Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies November 2006 Table of Contents Page Number Acknowledgements Declaration ii Abstract iii Abbreviations iv Chapter 1 Introduction: Stories and "Talk-stories" Chapter 2 15 Singing a High-pitched Song: Struggle for a Voice through "Talk-stories" in Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts' Chapter 3 94 Mythic/Creative Rewriting of American History: Claiming America through "Talk-stories" in Kingston's China Men Chapter 4 138 Fusion and Literariness: Construction of a Chinese American (Communal) Identity with a "Talk-story" Play in Kingston's Tripnzaster Monkey: His Fake Book Chapter 5 189 "Foreign-ness" and Popularity: Mother-Daughter "Talking-stories" in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, and The Bonesetter's Daughter Chapter 6 299 Conclusion: Stories that Never End Works Cited and Consulted 305 Acknowledgement First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Professor Michael Bell, my thesis supervisor, for his invaluable advice, insightful recommendations, constructive criticism, continual patience and support, and endless motivation throughout the completion of this thesis. I would also like to thank the staff of the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies for helping me one way or another all the way, in particular my mentor Dr. Gill Frith, my supervisor for the second and third year Dr. Helen Dennis, Professor Thomas Docherty, Dr. MJ Kooy, Professor Peter Mack, Professor Karen O'Brien, and Cheryl. This thesis would never be made possible without the funding from the University of Warwick (postgraduate research fellowship) and Universities UK (ORS award) and I am really grateful for the generous financial support from these funding bodies. I am also grateful to all the scholars and critics who have shed lights and provided important contribution in the studies of Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, storytelling, and Asian/Chinese American literature, for providing me leads and insights. Thanks are also due to all my friends in Hong Kong, in particular Amie, Maggie, and Winne, who are supporting me and sending me encouraging mails whenever I need. I am especially thankful to Professor Jason Gleckman of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who is always there for advice, encouragement, and guidance. I would also like to thank my brother and sister for being so supportive and helpful (offering help here and there, and cheering me up whenever I am down) throughout this journey. To my parents-in-law, thanks for the care and concern, albeit it could only be remotely conveyed. Finally I have to thank the most important persons in my life - perhaps words are just not enough to express my gratitude. To my parents, SL Wong and SK Yeung, for lifelong guidance, unwavering belief in my ability even though you never know what I am doing, and endless love; and my husband, SK Goh, for EVERYTHING. Declaration I hereby state that the thesis is my own work and confirm that the thesis has not been submitted for a degree at another university. ii Thesis abstract This thesis investigates the "talk-story" narrative patterns, which stem from the Chinese oral tradition, in selected works of two contemporary Chinese American women writers, Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan. In The Woman WI'arrior, Kingston has experimented with a new kind of "talk-story" writing in blending family stories, cultural myths, fantasy, autobiographical details, and history, as she attempts to model her work on the familial talk-story culture she was nurtured in. Borrowing the term "talk story" from a pidgin Hawai'ian expression, Kingston develops a special kind of generic "talk-story" as an artistic creation in her fictions. Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club is often compared to The Woman Warrior and a number of critics have observed the use of "talk-story" in Tan's novels, but the talk-story components in the two writers' works have been largely discussed in relation to the mother-daughter dyads and few critics have distinguished the different usages and functions of "talk-stories" in their works. Through a literary analysis of their works, my thesis attempts to enrich the concept of "talk-story" originated from Kingston, and discusses its relation to the works of Kingston and Tan, with an aim to teasing out the two writers' differences within their sameness. narrative While Kingston exhibits a talk-story structure in her works, Tan mainly confines the talk-story elements at a textual level as a healing narrative therapy between generations. I will argue that while both writers exemplify talk-story as a form of self-expression and empowerment, their talk-stories function differently as they interact with the mainstream discourse: while Kingston remodels the Chinese talk-story pattern by making it a form of literary art, Tan refashions talk-story as a kind of "talking-cure, " as in western psychotherapy, in her fictions and writes in the popular arena. Abbreviations WW The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts CM: China Men TM.- The Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book JLC: The Joy Luck Club KGW. " The Kitchen God's Wife BSD: The Bonesetter's Daughter AS: Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogaiva HMH. " In Her Mother's House: The Politics of Asian American Mother= Daughter Writing MHK: Maxine Hong Kingston (by Helena Grice) iv Chapter 1 Introduction: Stories and "Talk-stories" For the tongue meats that the poor man feeds the women are not material, of course. They are fairy tales, stories, jokes, songs; he nourishes them on talk, he wraps them in language; he banishes melancholy by refusing silence. Storytelling makes women fable but thrive - and not exclusively women, the Kenyan implies, other sorts of people, too, even sultans. the is tale that be done. As traditional ... story of storytelling a will never one closing formula implies, the story is made by both together: "This is my story, I've told it, and in your hands I leave it. " Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde (XI, XXI) A story is not just a story. Once the forces have been aroused and set into motion, they can't simply be stopped at someone's request. Once told, the story is bound to circulate; humanized, it may have a temporary end, but its effects linger on and its end is never truly an end. Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman,Native, Other (133) This thesis investigates the "talk-story" narrative patterns, which stem from the Chinese oral tradition, in selected works of two contemporary Chinese American women writers, Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan. It examines how "talk-story" functions as a narrative theme and structure in the two writers' literary works as they map out in "storied" forms their personal/socio-political concerns and physical/emotional conditions of being Chinese Americans. As a means of connecting the past with the present and future, storytelling becomes the vehicle through which Kingston and Tan re-mark their existence, reclaim their Chinese heritage, and reshape the American literary field. Stories and storytelling In Mules and Dragons: Popular Culture Images in the Selected Writings of African-American and Chinese-American Women Writers, Mary E. Young makes a comparative study of African-American and Chinese-American women writers and suggests that while "African-American women writers realize the difficulty of I survival in a highly complex social structure that is characterized by colorism, sexism, racism, and classism. Chinese-American women writers do not seem to have come to this realization" (146). According to Young, the majority of Chinese American women writers like Amy Tan "set the majority of their writings in China or in a mythical Chinatown" and "ignore their popular culture images or history in the United States, preferring instead to reinforce their identification with China" (128-129). While it is almost inevitable that the portrayal of a mythic China or Chinatown would attract Orientalist readingsand give an impression of the authors' intention to pander to a white audience by highlighting their foreign-ness, I believe Young's view of the Chinese Americän women writers' ignoring of social history, and the degrading stereotypes arising from it, is too simplistic and that she has analysedthe texts of Chinese-Americanwomen writers primarily with a reductive Orientalist view. Kingston and Tan demonstrate their awareness of the complex social structure they are in as their works feature bicultural characterswho struggle to survive amid the complexities and crisscrossing of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class, within their particular socio-historical, cultural, political, and economic realities. References to China and Chinese culture, exemplified in the portrayal of mythic/imaginary China and re-telling of past Chinesestories, are their strategies for seeking an identity and creating a voice for their "between worlds" characters through connecting the past and the present (Ling, Between Worlds 20). This is essential for the bicultural characters as only by acknowledging their ancestral heritage would they be able to situate and define themselves in the state of "double consciousness," as pointed out by W.