华裔美国文学中的母女关系文化内涵

The Cultural Implication of Mother-daughter Relationship in Chinese American Literature

随着20世纪70年代末华裔美国作家汤亭亭的《女勇士》在美国文坛发声至今,在华裔美国文学内部已经形成了自身清晰可辨的母系传统。由于特殊的移民历史和境遇,华裔美国文学母女关系书写既不同于美国白人中产阶级女性书写和主张也不同于其他弱势族的经验。本文选取三位女作家的三部涉及母女关系主题的小说伍慧明的《骨》,任碧莲的《梦娜在希望之乡》和谭恩美的《接骨师之女》,考察母女关系书写传统在20世纪90年代以后华裔美国文学中的继承、演变和创新,指出通过调用和调整移民母亲和本土女儿故事的时空架构,母女关系被置于华人移民家庭、族群和社区的历史与现实语境中加以考量。在跨族裔散居时代,母女关系这一文学母题策略性消解东方主义话语牵引下的传统/现代、东方/西方、自我/他者的二元对立身份认知范式,为母女关系书写增添了跨文化视角。

A recognizable matrilineage tradition can be traced from Chinese American literature since Maxine Hong Kingston＇s The Woman Warrior （1976） garnered national fame in the American literary circle in the late 1970s. Mother-daughter relationship in Chinese American literature is not only differ- ent from that of the mainstream Anglo-Saxon women literature but from that of other ethnic writings due to the fact that Chinese Americans have emerged from a unique immigration history and reality. The paper examines the variation of the tradition in the Chinese American texts published in the 1990s and the beginning of the 21 st century. By invoking and adapting the time and space of the mother-daughter stories, the mother-daughter relationship in there texts is explored in the history of Chinese American family and community. The paper points out that in the trans-ethnic Diaspora age Chinese American literature strategically dissolves the cognitive paradigm of identity that highlights the orientalist binary oppositions between tradition / modern, East/West and Self/Other. Thereby a trans-cultural perspec- tive is added to the traditional mother-daughter motif.