Constructing Chinese Americans' National Identity ISBN 1 873877 64 1
Abstract; This book is a three-faceted examination of the subject, a study of Chinese Americans' experience in White dominant America, an exploration of the discourse of American identity and a careful analysis of Kingston's texts that account for the construction of American identity for Chinese Americans. Although Kingston's texts have been discussed at great length from the angles of pedagogical materials, genre, textual and historical studies, this study attempts a different way of understanding her texts as a whole by examining her strategies of constructing American national identity for the Chinese American community, as I believe that her double-consciousness of national identity has greatly shaped the structuring of her ideology and philosophy which have been woven into her texts such as The Woman Warrior (1976), China Men (1980) and Tripmaster Monkey (1989). Organized around the central theme of how Kingston constructs Chinese Americans' national identity, this study includes specific considerations of issues such as Chinese Americans' experiences in the United States, Kingston's experiment with American English, her reconstruction of American history and myths.