一种复写:汤亭亭的《女勇士》

A Palimpsestuous Writing:Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior

汤亭亭(又名马克辛·洪·金斯顿)的《女勇士》是最为成功的亚裔美国文学作品之一。本文并未将此书当作一名在唐人街长大的亚裔美国女孩的个人自传来阅读,而是将它看作是对那些在追忆和当下之间徘徊、以中美纽带的符号形象存在的亚裔美国女性故事的全面讲述与书写。汤亭亭以其独特的复写策略重新审视了亚裔女性的生存意义。她不仅揭露了有关亚裔美国人的"官方"史册中禁忌的、隐匿的、不言而喻的、被误读或被掩盖的事实,而且还改写并重铸了这段历史。尽管如此,她并不打算用她的故事来抹去或取代其他故事版本。与此相反,当她把自己和像她一样的女性写进历史的时候,各种不同的声音和版本于书中互补,有时甚至相互冲突,从而形成了历史的现实。不仅如此,她还以全新的写作风格,将亚裔女性的梦想、幻想和想象也写进了历史。正因为此,汤亭亭超越了各种界限,通过多重声音和不同版本的互动,改写了亚裔女性的历史。她不仅以这种方式使自己成为一名女勇士,更使所有为这场斗争贡献力量的女性成为了女勇士。

Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior is one of the most successful Asian American literary works.Rather than reading the book as an autobiography of an Asian American girl growing up in Chinatown in America,I view it as a multifarious telling and writing of the stories of Asian American women in their interrelated relationships living in both the past and present in their hyphenated lives between China and America.With her palimpsestuous writing strategy,Kingston reexamines what it means to be an Asian American woman.She not only uncovers what is forbidden,hidden,unspoken,wronged,or covered in the official history of Asian Americans but also rewrites and reinvents it.Nevertheless,she does not intend to use her story to erase or replace the other versions.Instead,while writing herself and women like her into the history,she has various voices and versions complement and sometimes even contradict one another to form its reality.Furthermore,with her new genre of writing,she writes the dreams,fantasies,and imaginations of Asian American women into the history too.Thus,transgressing various boundaries,Kingston rewrites the history of Asian American women by representing the interaction of multiple voices and versions.In this way,Kingston not only makes herself a woman warrior but does so also for all women who contribute to the struggle.