Who are the representative writers of Chinese American literature?

The division of American literary history recognizes that many literary historians have endowed the War of Independence (1775- 178 1), the Civil War (1861-kloc-0/865), the First World War (/kloc-). It must be pointed out that these terms are various; They may represent a period of time, a form of political organization, an extraordinary cultural or imaginative model, or a dominant literary form.

1607-1775. The period from the establishment of the first colony in Jamestown to the outbreak of the American War of Independence is usually called the colonial period. Most of the works in this period are religious, realistic or historical. William bradford, John winthrop and theologian Cotton Mather are all famous periodical and narrative writers, who wrote the establishment and early history of some colonies in the17th century. In the next century, Jonathan Edwards was a major philosopher and theologian, while Benjamin Franklin was a clear and convincing master of early American prose writing. It was not until 1937 that edward tylor's manuscript was first published that people discovered that he was an outstanding religious poet with the metaphysical style of English devout poets Herbert and Crashaw. Ann braz Tritt was a major poet who adopted secular, family and religious themes during the colonial period.

1773, 19 Phyllis whitley, a slave born in Africa, published poems on various themes, which announced the emergence of a large number of outstanding black writers (or, to put it more easily later, African-American writers), but until recently they were still ignored. The African cultural traditions in the United States are very complex and diverse-both western and African, both oral and written, both slaves and freemen, both Jews and pagans, both plantations and cities. They advocate both the abolition of apartheid and black nationalism. These traditions have produced tension and integration, created innovative and distinctive literature in the long history, and are regarded as American music in the West. See: J Saunders Reading's Creating a Poet with Dark Skin (reprinted in 1939 and1986); Black American Literature by Houston A Baker, Jr. (1971); Black American Novels and Their Traditions by Bernard W Bell (1987); Black Image written by Henry Gates Jr. (1987) and Black Literature and Literary Theory edited by him (1984); Norton's Selected Works of Black American Literature (1997), edited by Henry L. Gates Jr. and Nelly MacKay.

The period between 1765 stamp duty act and 1790 is sometimes divided into the period of the war of independence. This is an influential revolutionary propaganda essay in the Thomas Paine era; This is the era of Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Religious Freedom Act, the Declaration of Independence and many other works. It is the time when the Federalist Anthology (the most famous articles are written by alexander hamilton and james madison) supports the Constitution. Philip Freneau and Joel Barlow wrote patriotic satires.

1775-1865.1775-1828 is called the early national literature period, which ended with the victory of Jackson's democracy in1828, marking the emergence of imaginative national literature. The works in this period include the first American stage comedy [The Contrast by Royal Taylor (1787)] and the earliest American novels. Washington irving's prose and stories have won international fame; Charles Brockden Brown created a mysterious and horrible Gothic novel with American characteristics. James fenimore Cooper, the first important American novelist, successfully started his creative career. The poems written by william cullen bryant and edgar allan poe are relatively independent of their English predecessors. 1760, a large number of African-American slaves who escaped or gained freedom published the first works of slave stories and autobiographies. Most of these works were published in 1830- 1865, including Frederick Douglass's Life and Times in Frederick Douglass (1845) and harriet Jacobs's One Man.

1828- 1865, from Jackson's time to the American Civil War, is usually regarded as the The Romantic Period of the United States (see: neoclassicism and romanticism), marking the complete arrival of the unique era of American literature. This period is sometimes called the American Renaissance. The name comes from Ma Xisen's influential book of the same name (194 1), which reviews the famous writers of this period, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, henry david thoreau, edgar allan poe, herman melville and nathaniel hawthorne (see also Symbolism). This stage, sometimes called Transcendentalism, centered on Emerson, began after the dominant philosophical and literary movement in New England (see Transcendentalism). In all literary genres except drama, the originality and high artistic achievement of the works created by writers in this period are beyond the reach of later American literature. Emerson, Thoreau and Margaret Fowler, an early feminist, influenced many American writers of that era and later generations in their thoughts, ideals and literary goals. This is not only the period when william cullen bryant, washington irving and James fenimore Cooper put forward new works, but also the period when Allan Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe and southern novelist William Guilmault Simms wrote novels and short stories. This is the period when Poe, John Greenleaf Whittier, Emerson, henry wadsworth longfellow and walt whitman, the most innovative and influential American poets, wrote poems. This is also the period when Poe, Simms and James Russell Lowell began to show outstanding American literary criticism in their prose. Francis Allen Watkins Harper has continued the tradition of African-American poetess's poetry creation. African-American novels begin with William Wells Brown's Claude (1853) and harriet E Wilson's We Black (1859).

1865 ——1914 years. The bloody American Civil War, the post-war reconstruction in the south and the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization in the north have brought about great changes, which have profoundly changed America's understanding of itself and its literary model. The period from 1865 to 1900 is usually called the realistic period, which refers to the works of Mark Twain, William Dean howells, Henry James, John W. Deforest, Harold Frederick and African-American novelist Charles W. Chesnut. Although these works are different, they are all classified as "realism" to distinguish them from the "legendary" works of Poe, Hawthorne and Melville, their predecessors in prose novels (see: prose legend and realism). Some realistic writers take this area as the background of their novels; These writers (besides Mark Twain's novels about the Mississippi Valley) include Brett Hart of California, Sarah Orne Jewett of Maine, Mary Wilkins Freeman of Massachusetts, George W Cable of Louisiana and kate chopin. (See: local novels. Chopin is now famous as an early leading feminist writer. Whitman continued to write poetry until the last decade of the19th century, and then Emily Dickinson joined the ranks of poetry creation (which Whitman and almost everyone else didn't know). Although Dickinson wrote more than 65,438+0,000 short poems, only seven of them were published before her death. She is considered as one of the most unique and outstanding poets in the United States today. Sidney Lanier published an experimental poem of poetic rhythm based on musical beat; Paul laurence dunbar, an American black writer, published poems and novels from 1893 to 1905. In the1890s, Stephen Crane (although he was only 29 years old when he died) published short free poems before Pound and the imagist's experimental works. At the same time, he also created brilliant and innovative short stories and short stories, and predicted two narrative modes of naturalism and impressionism. During the period of 1900- 19 14, although James, Howells and Mark Twain continued to write, Edith Wharton also published her early novels, but in order to express her strong appeal to the novels of Frank Norris, Jack London and theodore dreiser, these works were sometimes rough (what these works are important is to become the victims of the interaction between instinctive desire and external social forces. See also naturalism in Realism and Naturalism.

1914 ——1939. This period was between the two world wars and was marked by the trauma caused by the Great Depression that began in 1929. It was a period that is still called "modern literature", and its outstanding achievements in the United States reached a level comparable to that of the American Renaissance in the middle of the19th century. But unlike most early writers, American modernist writers also enjoy a wide international reputation and influence. (See: Modernism. ) Harriet Monroe 19 12 founded Poetry magazine in Chicago, and published the works of many innovative writers. These famous poets include edgar lee masters, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, Carl Sandberg, Wallace Stevens, william carlos williams, ezra pound, robinson jeffers, Marianne Moore, T.S. Eliot, Edna St.Vincent Millay and E.E. Cummings. These poets adopted all kinds of unprecedented poetic creation modes, including imagism of poets such as amy lowell and Hilda doolittle, Frost's rhythmic poems, Williams' free poems written in American dialect, Cummings' experiments in form and typesetting, jeffers's poetic naturalism, and Pound and Eliot's combination of French symbolism and traditional ways with the wisdom and metaphor of English metaphysical poets. The main writers of prose novels are Edith Wharton, sinclair lewis, Ellen Glasgow, Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, sherwood anderson, john dos passos, F Scott Fitzgerald, william faulkner, ernest hemingway, Thomas Ulf and john steinbeck. During this period, the United States produced the first outstanding playwright Eugene O 'Neill and a large number of famous literary critics, including Van Wyck Brooks, malcolm cowley, T.S. Eliot, edmund wilson and arrogant and mean H·L· Mencken.

Literary works in this period are often subdivided into many ways. 1920s, luxury, grandiosity and enjoyment, sometimes called "Jazz Age". The popularity of this name is due to the story of The Jazz Age by F Scott Fitzgerald (1922). This decade is also the period of harlem renaissance. Many African-American writers, such as Kandy Cullen, langston hughes, Claude MacKay, Joan Tumer, zora neale hurston, etc., created the major works of the harlem renaissance period in various literary forms. (See: harlem renaissance. )

After the end of World War I, many outstanding American writers in this decade were deeply disillusioned with their war experiences. They are alienated by the ignorance of American culture and its "Puritan" repression, and are often labeled as "the lost generation" (gertrude stein first used this word to refer to French young people at that time). Some of these writers emigrated to London or Paris in pursuit of a more colorful literary and artistic environment and a freer lifestyle. Ezra pound, Gertrude Stein and T.S. Eliot all died abroad, but most of the younger "exiles", as malcolm cowley said, "The Return of Exiles (1934)", all returned to the United States in the 1930 s, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and Fitzgerald's The Night is Young. In the "radical 1930s", that is, the Great Depression of the United States and President franklin delano roosevelt's New Deal brought about economic and social changes, some writers devoted themselves to radical political movements, while many other writers touched on the social problems that needed to be solved at that time in their literary works, including the novels of william faulkner, John dos pazos, James T. Farrell, Thomas Ulf and john steinbeck, and the plays of Eugene O 'Neill, Clifford Odets and Maxwell Anderson. See: USA 1930s: the literary history of Peter Kang En (2009); Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression, by Maurice dickstein (2009).

1939 to present, contemporary period. World War II, especially the trial of so-called treason in Moscow and the Soviet-German treaty signed by Stalin and Hitler in 1939, led to the disillusionment of capitalism in the Soviet Union, which largely ended the literary radicalism in the 1930 s .. 199 1 the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In the following decades, the southern conservative writers who actively supported the return from industrial economy to agricultural economy in 1960s and 1930s, that is, the egalitarian landowners, dominated the new criticism, representing the general criticism trend that literature was divorced from the author's life and society. Formally, literary works are regarded as organic and autonomous entities. [See: John L. Stewart (1965)' The Burden of Time: Runaways and Equal Land Tenor'. However, the prestigious and influential critics edmund wilson and lionel trilling, as well as other critics classified as new york literati, including Philip Ralph, Alfred Carson, Dwight MacDonald and Irving Howe, still viewed literary works from the perspective of humanity and history in the1960s, taking the author's life, temperament and social environment as the background, and taking the morality, imagination and social influence of the works as the evaluation criteria. See: The Return of the Prodigal Son: new york Scholars and Their World Alexander Bloom (1986); The fourth chapter of Leach's American Literary Criticism in 1930s-1980s (1988). For a discussion on the radical new development of American literary theory and criticism in the 1970s and beyond, see post-structuralism.

Looking back, although the period of 1950 is often regarded as a period of cultural consistency and contentment with the status quo, it is marked by the emergence of various energetic literary movements against the existing social system and tradition: allen ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and other beat writers; American model of absurd literature; Montenegro poets Charles Olson, Robert Creole and Robert Duncan; New york poets Frank O 'Hara, Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery. This is also the period when confession poems are popular, and literature holds an extremely frank and open attitude towards sex. During this period, the famous writer henry miller appeared (he began to write autobiographical and fictional works in 1960s+0930s, but only circulated privately before 1960s+0950s), as well as norman mailer, William Barros and Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita was published in 1960s +0955). The anti-cultural movements in the 1960s and early 1970s inherited some previous creative models, but the rebellious youth movements and fierce and sometimes even fierce opposition to the Vietnam War pushed them to extremes and fanaticism. For a discussion of this movement, see: The Formation of Anti-culture by Theodore Rozak (1969); For a follow-up review of this movement, please refer to The Gate of Eden: American Culture in 1960s by Maurice dickstein (1978). African-American literary works that saw the radical development of modernism and postmodernism were at this stage. See Black Art Movement.

The important writers of American prose novels after World War II are: Vladimir Nabokov (who immigrated to the United States in 1940/KLOC-0), eudora welty, robert penn warren, bernard malamud, James Kurdish Cosens, Saul Bellow, Mary Therese McCarthy, norman mailer, john updike, Kurt Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Thomas Pynchon, John Bass, The main representatives of donald barthelme and E.' s poetry creation are: Marianne Moore, robert penn warren, Theodore Rotteck, Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Wilbur, Robert Lowell, allen ginsberg, adrianna Ritchie, Sylvia Plath's plays including thornton wilder, Lillian Herman, arthur miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albert, and some later playwrights, including Sam. In the last decades of the 20th century, many of the most innovative and outstanding literary works were often created by writers belonging to a "minority" or a national literary group (a "national group" is composed of individuals who are in the mainstream culture and social system and obviously have the same characteristics as race, religion, language, cultural model and ethnic origin). However, there are many controversies inside and outside these groups. The focus of the dispute is whether to regard these writers as part of mainstream American literature or to emphasize that each writer is a participant in a certain national culture and has his own unique theme, theme and formal characteristics, which is more just and accurate. (See: Identity Theorist in Humanism. This is the era of outstanding African-American novelists and essayists Ralph Ellison, james baldwin, richard wright, Albert Murray, Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, as well as poets amiri baraka (Lai Roy Jones), Gwendolyn Brooks, Maya Angelou and Rita Duff. This is the era of playwrights Roland Hansbury and August Wilson. For some developments of popular poetry mode, see: Performance Poetry. ) This is also the period when outstanding minority novelists such as Ma Xinmo Meng Silkko (American Indian), Oscar Huurros and Sandra cisneros (Hispanic American), Jupa Lahiri (East Indian), Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan (Chinese American) emerged. See: Three Kinds of American Literature: Chicano Literature, Native American Literature and Asian American Literature Series: A Teacher's Manual of American Literature, edited by Houston A. Baker (1982).

1. "Double Consciousness" in Chinese American Literature

Chinese American literature flourished in the 1960s. From Li Jinyang's Flower Drum Song to Amy Tan's Sinking Fish published in recent years, Chinese-American works depict Chinese Americans as "amphibians" between two cultures and two worlds. The older generation of immigrants have a deep and solid foundation in China, and seldom doubt the superiority of China traditional culture. After coming to the United States, their semi-closed living environment has largely separated them from the mainstream American society. Their psychological identification with American culture is often slow and passive, and they are not confused about their own position: they are American China people. A new generation of "Made in America" grows in the ocean of American culture. Naturally, they actively accepted American culture and considered themselves pure Americans. However, the cruel reality shows that they are all Americans and China people, but they don't completely belong to either side. No matter what one wishes, he can't go beyond the category of "Chinese"; In the eyes of many westerners blinded by racial prejudice, "China people" are always synonymous with poverty, backwardness and ignorance. There should be no seats for Chinese in western paradise, although these Chinese are also American citizens. This point was commented by Professor Zhang Chong as a result of the cross-ethnic and cross-cultural transnational characteristics of the diaspora. They are often embodied in the intangible source culture, the division and conflict between source consciousness and explicit modern culture and modern consciousness, some degree of identity uncertainty, and some kind of "dual identity" or "dual consciousness".

The conflict between China youth with American cultural values and China parents with China cultural values can best reflect this collision of dual consciousness. According to their own experience and experience, the older generation of immigrants are convinced that in a white-supremacy society, Chinese children must be outstanding in order to have a foothold and hope of success. So they strictly discipline their children and even sacrifice themselves for their future. This is how the mothers in The Joy Luck Club try their best to dominate their daughters' lives and arrange their daughters' future according to China's traditional ideas, but what they encounter is their daughters' open rebellion or negative resistance. Mother and daughter get along day and night, but they are strangers; They step on the same land, but live in two completely different worlds. In this way, the generation gap existing in the conflict between the two cultural traditions has become more insurmountable. The conflict between mother and daughter in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club (1989) and The Kitchen God's Wife (199 1) shows that the strong "China plot" of the first generation of Chinese immigrants is incompatible with the rebellious psychology of daughters who grew up in the United States. They neither understand nor are interested in the "Chinese roots" cherished by the older generation. In their view, China's traditional culture is just some incredible customs in a distant and unfamiliar country. Both Maxine Hong Kingston's and Amy Tan's novels emphasize that the second generation of immigrants gradually alienated the China culture imprinted on their skin, and consciously highlighted their desire to integrate into the mainstream culture of white Americans.

2. The image of "the other" in Chinese American literature from the perspective of Orientalism.

Under the power discourse centered on white people, the history of Chinese struggle and survival in the United States has become a hidden and repressed history. Maxine Hong Kingston devoted eight pages to the Chinese Exclusion Act after the third chapter of China Guy, Grandfather on the Sierra Nevada, and listed the Chinese Exclusion Act and related major events promulgated by the US government from 1868 to 1978, clearly pointing out the history of discrimination and persecution of Chinese by the US government. The power discourse of the white center affects their description of Chinese Americans, and the history of Chinese can be distorted, rewritten or hidden to conform to the power discourse under the white supremacy.

Said's oriental theory embodies the rejection and oppression of the weak culture in China literature by the strong white culture in the west. According to Said's description, Orientalism has two meanings: the first refers to the way of thinking based on the ontological and epistemological differences between the East and the West; The second meaning is that the West has dominated and reconstructed the East for a long time, and the way to speak is 1. Therefore, based on this unequal relationship, the so-called Orientalism has become a myth invented by western ignorance, prejudice and curiosity about the eastern world. Orientalism, as a deep-rooted prejudice and cognitive system of westerners towards the East, is actually a product of artificial fiction created by western imperialism trying to control and dominate the East. From Foucault's discourse theory, this is the product of power, a kind of intellectual power or cultural hegemonism. Said regards the East as the "other" and constructs an "East" that is completely opposite to the West through discourse hegemony, thus proving that Western civilization is a superior civilization that embodies rationality, morality and justice, and thus can openly colonize the East. The deep-rooted racist consciousness marginalizes, dilutes and feminizes the cultures of other ethnic minorities, making it impossible for them to have an equal dialogue with the cultures of other ethnic groups, let alone to live, survive and develop together in the so-called free and equal country of the United States, as advocated by advocates of multiculturalism. In the final analysis, Chinese American literature is a "hybrid" literary variety in the sense of post-colonial theory, which is an innovation based on the combination of Chinese and western cultural traditions. For a long time, the mainstream society has formed a conceptual impression of China men: they are passers-by in American society and will always be foreigners; Not a restaurant, a laundry or a white maid, doing a daughter's job is not manly; Accustomed to resignation; They are silent and mysterious. The attitude towards women in China can be reflected in jade snow wong's autobiographical novel Five Daughters. The little girl in China was bullied at school. White boys called her China and threw a blackboard eraser at her. When the heroine in the article was about to graduate from college, the staff of the resettlement office said to her, "If you are sensible, go to China's office to find a job. You get nothing at the American Chamber of Commerce. In any case, you must know that racial prejudice along the Pacific coast is very unfavorable to you. "

In order to cater to the mainstream culture and enter the mainstream American society, Chinese American writers, represented by Harkin, deliberately orient their discourse, trying to abandon and hide the identity of China culture to please the western audience and market, thus consolidating the central position of the mainstream culture and the western discourse hegemony over the East. In the novel Waiting, Ha Jin describes Shu Yu as a good farmer who can pick and carry, but she is wrapped in a three-inch golden lotus, which is a symbol and epitome of traditional women in China for orientalists. In his short story Sunlight, the value of men is completely equal to sexual ability, and through Mu Ying's description, feminists who are divorced from the background of the times are equal to shameless prostitutes. Ha Jin "castrated" men to cater to the western mainstream view that oriental men are feminine. This earned him the Kane Book Award in 1993 and the General Carter Award in 1995. Harkin tells the story of women in China with a "true" voice, but this is just a monster created to cater to the interest of western feminism and the expectation of Orientalism. Therefore, the image of "the other" in Chinese American literature is "carried forward".

3. The national image in Chinese American literature.

In order to resist the degradation, rejection and misinterpretation of China culture by the mainstream American white culture, Chinese Americans vigorously promote China culture and seek their own cultural identity and recognition. The works of Chinese-American writers have indeed grafted China culture, and the most typical female image is Maxine Hong Kingston's integration and adaptation of The Tattoo of Mother-in-law and The Legend of Mulan in The Woman Warrior. As the first influential writer in the history of American literature, Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior is an important milestone in the development of Chinese American literature. Maxine Hong Kingston's understanding of China culture in the process of creation is through the veil of American culture, but it has left some ghosts, blending and misunderstandings. This is because the descendants of Chinese Americans who were born and raised in the United States mostly learned about the culture and history of China from the stories of their predecessors, and they became blurred and regarded themselves as an inherent part of American society. Finally, Ma Kexin Hong pointed out that American culture itself is multicultural, and the unique Chinese culture is also an inseparable and important part of this cultural system, which should not be despised and excluded.

Dividing American literature into historical segments or "periods" that are convenient for discussion, unlike dividing English literature periods, can gain the knowledge of literary scholars; See the division of English literature in different periods. Many college syllabus surveys in Paul Lauter's Rebuilding American Literature (1983) and Redefining the History of American Literature by A. Lavon Brown Ruff and Jerry W. Ward (1990) have proved that recently (especially since people tried to treat the works of women and minority writers fairly). However, a remarkable trend is to realize the importance of major wars in the major changes of symbolic literature. As the scholar Cushing Strout commented, this trend "shows that in the political history of the United States, there is a more obvious and convincing order than in specific literary or cultural categories".