Strategic Representations of Chinese Cultural Elements in Maxine Hong Kingston's and Amy

200 Pages·2017·1.25 MB·English

by  Curtin University

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 States. I chose to study Kingston and Tan not just out of
fondness, but because they are, arguably, the two most successful female Chinese
American authors, and their writings share common features, such as mother-daughter
storytelling and a mixing of genres, but more importantly, for me, an extended use of
Chinese culture in their English texts. My research mainly focuses on but is not only
confined to two texts: Kingston’s The Woman Warrior (1976) and Tan’s The Joy Luck
Club (1989). These two books are the authors’ representative and most discussed
works, and therefore can be the most persuasive cases for my research. My thesis is
not traditional literary criticism; rather I employ an intercultural approach and extend
my analysis beyond literary texts to include other cultural forms.
Before I start discussing what I aim to achieve in this project in detail, I think it is
necessary to clarify some key terms in the title of my thesis:
Chinese Cultural Elements: Since the publication of Kingston’s The Woman Warrior,
successive works by Chinese American writers, especially female writers, have
deployed Chinese cultural elements frequently in their works. This phenomenon
should not be interpreted in a simplified way: they are of Chinese origin, so,
accordingly, they write about China. In this thesis, 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.
These Chinese popular cultural elements, which sometimes I refer to as ‘Chinese
elements’ or ‘Chinese culture’, are a generic category that references traditional
Chinese culture, symbols, stories and customs that are familiar to most diaspora and
2