食物与文化身份认同——《裸体吃中餐》中华裔美国人的文化焦虑

Food and Cultural Identification: Chinese American’s Cultural Anxiety in Eating Chinese Lunch Naked

美国"新生代"女作家伍美琴的小说《裸体吃中餐》中食物和烹饪一直贯穿小说的始终,饮食作为"文化象征"在身份认同的形成过程中起到了重要作用。通过聚焦于"食",解析女主角露比作为华裔美国人对于本族裔文化由疑惑、冒充到超越的过程,正是中餐让她意识到华人血统和文化是她内在的文化基因,因而无法否认和逃避,但是可以结合出身和自我认同,在此基础上建构一种多元文化的身份。这是一种比较圆满的应对文化焦虑、确认个人文化身份的方式,也是全球化多元融合时代实现个体超越的存在实践。

Food and food preparation,as a cultural symbol,plays a prominent role in the process of cultural identification throughout Eating Chinese Food Naked by Mei Ng,a"New Generation"Chinese American woman writer.The article centers on food,following and interpreting the heroine Ruby’s shifting of positions on the issue of her ethnic culture from confusion to passing,and to transcendence at last.It is Chinese meal that brought home to her the fact that Chinese blood and descent is an inherent gene in the make-up of her cultural identity,which she cannot deny and run away from.However,as the ending of the novel shows,she has eventually found a way out to establish her cultural identity,that is,to construct a multi-cultural identity based on both ethnic descent and self-consent,realizing an existentially personal transcendence in multi-cultural age of globalization.