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Maxine Hong Kingston's Novels

This study will examine Maxine Hong Kingston's works China Men and Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book. The thesis of the study will be that, in moving from the earlier China Men to the later Tripmaster Monkey, Kingston's work came to transcend the question of what it means to be Chinese, or Chinese-American, or American, and to focus instead on what it means to accept one's circumstances and to boldly forge one's personal and cultural identities based on the reality of those circumstances.

The argument of the study will be, then, that Kingston's earlier book focuses on the Chinese traditions which served as the foundation for the culture of Chinese-Americans, while the later book develops the character of one individual who has melded Chinese and American traditions to such a degree that something new emerged, something which, perhaps, transcends both cultures in important ways.

There are, nevertheless, mythical elements in both books, from the very beginning of both of them. "Mythical" here means the attempt on the part of the author to create a reality which is bigger than life, which transcends the mundane concerns of most ordinary human beings as they live out their ordinary lives ordinary day after ordinary day.

Therefore, in China Men, we find this beginning: "Once upon a time, a man, named Tang Ao, looking for the Gold Mountain, crossed an ocean, and came upon the Land of Women" (Kingston, 1980, p. 3). And in Tripmaster Monkey, we find this opening passage: "Maybe it comes from living in San Francisco, city of clammy humors and foghorns that warn and warn --- omen, o-o-omen, o dolorous omen, o dolors of omens --- and not enough sun, but Wittman Ah Sing considered suicide every day. Entertained it" (Kingston, 1989, p. 3).

We see something important has been altered in both the style of Kingston's prose and in the approach that she makes toward her characters and her themes. In China Men, we find a cool distanc...

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Maxine Hong Kingston's Novels. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 04:37, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1704690.html