Recuperating Father(s) and Retracing “I” in Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men

Abstract

Maxine Hong Kingston, one of the most critiqued Chinese American writers, publishes her China Men in 1980 as a history and genealogy of her Chinese American men. Through the stories of her father and forefathers she not only unmasks the erasure and distortions of Chinese-American history but also talks back to the hegemonic white discourse. While the book is popularly highlighted as a historical fiction where Kingston writes about her Chinese ancestors from men’s point of view, an autobiographical search for “self” pervades everywhere in the narrative. In her constant struggle for recovering the father(s) from a state of silence and historical amnesia, she constructs a dialogical self in relation to history, culture, myth, and her people. Focusing on these aspects, the present paper argues that in China Men Kingston recuperates the father(s) from a historical loss and constructs a dialogical “I” in relation to her people especially by constructing an intersubjectivity with her father.

Keywords

• Chinese-American history
• Forefathers
• Dialogical self
• China Man
• Maxine Hong Kingston

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