2025/08/30 by Shuyue Liu, Junwu Tian · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Asian American and Pacific Histories #Diaspora, migration, transnational identity #Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/00111619.2025.2551782
openalex publication_date 2025/08/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
This article examines the narrative poetics and thematic concerns in Chinese American literature through a comparative analysis of the writings by Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, and Celeste Ng. The article interprets how these authors recount the between-world experiences of Chinese Americans across generations by employing distinct narrative strategies: spatial forms, temporal alternations, and intriguing narrative progression. Kingston’s historical narrative, China Men, details a description of spaces for historical authenticity of early laborers’ experiences and uses a fragmented narrative collage to mirror their bewilderment between the “promised” America and their hometown. Characterized by temporal alternation, Tan’s mnemonic narrative, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, portrays how the American-born Chinese daughter untangles present dilemmas through an excursion into personal and familial history. Ng initiates her mystery narrative, Everything I Never Told You, with the unexplained death of a mixed-race adolescent and thereby engages readers in piecing together the factors that shaped her fraught navigation between the harsh reality and idealized fantasies. In the first comparative study of works by these three authors through a narratological lens, we attempt to integrate cultural analysis with literary hermeneutics to trace the evolving portrayal of Chinese American experiences.