Pin-chia Feng Livres

This study traces the textual construction of identity in the female Bildungsroman of Toni Morrison and Maxine Hong Kingston. Deploying the "politics of rememory" in their textual representation of female development, Morrison and Kingston unearth the multiple layers of repressed memories, including personal stories, specific cultural history, and racial experiences of African- and Asian-American women. This book analyzes the working through of repressed memories in Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Sula, and Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior and China Men. The gap between Bildung and anti-Bildung in these texts highlights the multiple oppression faced by women of color and interrogates the established standards and value system of the hegemonic culture.

Focusing on the textual construction of female identity, this study explores how literature reflects and shapes women's experiences and self-perception. It delves into various narratives, analyzing the interplay between societal expectations and personal identity. Through a critical lens, the work examines themes of empowerment, resistance, and the evolution of female roles in literature, offering insights into how these narratives contribute to broader discussions about gender and identity in contemporary society.

In Diasporic Representations, Feng examines the stratification of various diasporic subjectivities through close reading fiction by Chinese American women writers of different social and class backgrounds. Deploying a strategy of „attentive reading“, Feng engages the intersecting issues of historicity, spatiality, and bodily imagination from diasporic and feminist perspectives to illuminate the dynamics of deterritorialization and reterritorialization in Chinese American novels in this transnational age. The authors studied include Diana Chang, Edith Eaton, Yan Geling, Nieh Hualing, Gish Jen, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Aimee Liu, Fae Myenne Ng, Sigrid Nunez, Han Suyin, and Amy Tan.