UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff MMoonnttaannaa SScchhoollaarrWWoorrkkss aatt UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff MMoonnttaannaa Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Graduate School Professional Papers 2003 FFiinnddiinngg aanndd uunnddeerrssttaannddiinngg tthhee eelluussiivvee sseellff:: CChhaannggiinngg iiddeennttiittiieess iinn AAmmyy TTaann''ss TThhee HHuunnddrreedd SSeeccrreett SSeennsseess aanndd MMaaxxiinnee HHoonngg KKiinnggssttoonn''ss TThhee WWoommaann WWaarrrriioorr Jennifer Walworth The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits you. RReeccoommmmeennddeedd CCiittaattiioonn Walworth, Jennifer, "Finding and understanding the elusive self: Changing identities in Amy Tan's The Hundred Secret Senses and Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior" (2003). 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Maureen and Mike MANSFIELD LIBRARY The University of Montana Permission is granted by the author to reproduce this material in its entirety, provided that this material is used for scholarly purposes and is properly cited in published works and reports. ♦♦Please check "Yes" or "No" and provide signature** Yes, I grant permission No, I do not grant permission Author’s Signature: — C0< Date: S/3ûj0 h Any copying for commercial purposes or financial gain may be undertaken only with the author’s explicit consent. 8/98 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Finding and Understanding the Elusive Self: Changing Identities in Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior By Jennifer Walworth B.A. Willamette University, Salem, Oregon, 1991 M A T. Willamette University, Salem, Oregon, 1997 presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts The University of Montana May 2003 Approved by: Dean, Graduate School ^ -0 3 Date Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: EP36682 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT Dimttmon ftibMMna UMI EP36682 Published by ProQuest LLC (2013). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code uesf ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Walworth, Jennifer M.A., May 2003 English Finding and Understanding the Elusive Self; Changing Identities in Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior Director: Casey Charles literary critics of Kingston’s contemporary classic The Woman Warrior and Amy Tan’s popular fiction have explored the ways fiiese two writers use their backgrounds as CWnese-American women to inform their writing. In reading the books as feminist and/or eümic enterprises, researchers typically emphasize the characters’ mother- daughter relationships, attempts by the protagonists to balance an American reality with Chinese expectations, and liiiks to characters’ Chinese heritage. In addition, however, readers witness the characters engage in a changing, fluid identity formation throughout the texts. Both Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses and Kingston’s The Woman Warrior dispd the traditional narrative notion of a single, linear self, and also go beyond both feminist and ethnic studies as their characters weave in and out of shifting identities. Multiplicities involving language and cultural differences provide a platform for exploring these changing identities in both texts. Tan’s and Kingston’s characters try on various identity possibilities as they live with and around identities fiom their Chinese heritages. Always searching for the elusive sel^ sometimes fiie characters embody the Chinese immigrant, sometimes the successfiü, modem American woman, and sometimes both simultaneously. Tan and Kingston further complicate identity formation with multiplicities that are not necessarily culturally dépendait. Shifts in narrator and time and an elusory diegesis force the characters to confiront a plethora of possibilities as they seek to understand their changing identities. The past and present, stories and legends, and former lives interweave to demonstrate the conqilexity of identity. Accompanying the characters in an expansion of the reader-response experimce, readers, too attempt to understand the profound—and messy—nature of identity formation. These writers transcend not only the notion of the traditional, linear narrative but also the popular belief that the minority experimce differs so dramatically fiom the non­ minority experience as to render any and all parts of it unknowable to an “outsider.” Instead, Tan and Kingston—grounding fiieir stories in the complicated exploration of identity formation—mine their unique cultural backgrounds to emphasize the human connectedness of us all. 11 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to several important people for the completion of this paper, without them, it would have taken me even longer to finish. I thank Mark Kayll for extra duty on the domestic front, allowing me (and sometimes gently forcing me) to get the writing done. Thank you to Kris Becker for reading early drafts and making insightful comments, as well as giving me much-needed pep talks in the beginning stages of the planning and writing. Veronica Stewart deserves tremendous thanks for teaching me to avoid the “to be” verb. Sincere thanks go to my committee—my advisor Casey Charles, Beverly Chin, and Joaime Charboimeau—for their extreme patience and helpful comments. Most especially, I thank Joanne. She encouraged me to see the prqrer’s potential and then helped me realize that potential. Working with her has been a blessing; I thank her for her generosity and her Mendship. m Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................iii INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................1 MULTIPLICITIES........................................................................................................15 Cultural Differences.......................................................................................................16 Language Differences........................................................... 22 EXPANDING AND BROADENING THE MULTIPLICITIES....................................34 Changes in Narrative Voice—Whose Story Is It?..........................................................37 Time—Past and Present ....................................................................................45 Searching for the Diegesis.............................................................................................49 CONCLUSION..................................................... 60 NOTES..........................................................................................................................65 WORKS CITED............................................................................................................67 IV Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION As humans, we constantly engage in atten^ts to discover meanings in our lives, and in this on-going process, we constantly re-define ourselves. We construct new identities as our roles shift fiom child to adolescent to adult, and these idaitities encompass all our past experiences, our hopes and fears for the future, and reflections on what is possible or thinkable. From the time humans first began telling stories, narrative has performed a critically mqx>rtant and complex psychological function. Stories can embody and celebrate a culture’s history and memory; they can free the imagination of readers, aigaging them in an anpathetic act that breaks them out of their own of time and q>ace; and they can test readers’ belief systems by challenging them with ideas and characters that might be repugnant or alim to their ways of thinking. Stories also allow characters to create identities, often paralleling identity formation experiences of readers/listeners. Leslie Marmon Silko celebrates the radical nature of story-telling by claiming stories are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death. You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories. (Silko 2) Essential to human development and identity formation, stories finally became embedded in longer narratives; in these narratives, characters engage in the process of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. creating and defining meaning in dieir lives and constructing identities fiom their own desires in tension with cultural and social expectations. Traditional narratives—including the epic and the novel—employ a linear form as a vehicle for describing the process of self-discovery, self-definition, and maturation fiom childhood into adulthood. In archetypal or mythological terms, the exile-retum motif captured the pattern of meaning of the traditional bildungsroman : boy grows up, leaves home, aigages in transformative adventures, returns to the community, marries girl with impeccable virtues, and contributes to the good of the society. Or, as Joseph Campbell describes it, the journey of the hero involves "a separation fiom the world, a penetration to some source of power, and life-enhancing return" (Canqrbell 35). Readers learn about the hero via this thread of his life story. He fights a dragon, so we know he is valorous; he scorns tempting sirens, so we know he is loyal. The hero is described and understood in terms of what he does and says within a specific—usually chronological—time frame. But this conventional narrative provides just one method for recording the life of a character, and it tends to omit a range of experiences, relationships, and important backgrounds that may more completely tell the character’s story. The traditional hero does indeed exen^lify valor and loyalty, but his life and personality encompass more than simply his droughts and actions. In addition to a valiant fighter, he is also the product of the customs, rituals, and values of his village; the influences of teachers, peers, and community members; and his family’s stories, heard over the course of a lifetime. In the traditional narrative, these elemaits of dre hero usually rerrmin outside the reader’s vision, yet they can illuminate the hero in ways his actions and even his thoughts carmot. To truly understand the hero, we must acknowledge that his story Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.