Language and Voice in Asian American Post Colonial Literature

Hybridised upbringings reflected in the writings of Asian America

**Unfortunately I lost my submitted dissertation, the below is an earlier non-final version**

INTRODUCTION:
LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY AND POSTCOLONIALISM

It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable.[1] — George Orwell, 1984

There has long been an assumed correlation between thought and language; both within the field of linguistic study as well as in popular literature and culture. The concept of ‘Linguistic Relativity’ was first proposed by the linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. Initially their theory, known then as ‘Linguistic Determinism’, proposed that language defined thought outright, but over the decades this has been challenged and criticised by linguists and anthropologists, leading to a revised, weaker form of the hypothesis, what we refer to as ‘Linguistic Relativism’. This form of the ‘Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis’, named in honour of their joint efforts, proposes that language merely influences thought based on categories made available by the language, thus bypassing the rigidity and constraints put in place by a Determinist view.[2]

George Orwell’s seminal classic 1984 famously alluded to notions of determinist thought control through the use of a language known as ‘Newspeak’. It was said, through this language, revolutionary thoughts were literally unthinkable. As extreme a case 1984 may make for Linguistic Determinism, the concept of language in some way affecting thought isn’t too difficult a leap. Language is used as a tool in advertising and propaganda to shape the way we think. Speech writers go so far as to gauge reactions on individual keywords in a speech; such is the emphasis placed on the power of oratory and language.

This concept of ‘Linguistic Relativity’ is at the heart of my analysis of the writings of Asian American postcolonial writers and, more specifically, how important a part language plays in the formation of cultural identity. When a writer puts their existence in words, the words from a language that some consider and portray as their ‘oppressor’s’, how much of their identity is lost? Or if, in the case of second or third generation immigrant writers, there is what is considered a ‘generational language shift’ to the detriment of their heritage language, what are the repercussions and consequence? The conflict between generations is prevalent in many writings by Asian American authors. Language and communication often form the only remaining link to their ethnic origins. The barrier between languages can often be attributed as one of the key sources of isolation in migrant literature.

Language and voice play integral parts especially in the writings of Maxine Hong Kingston, in both her novels The Woman Warrior[3] and the follow-up China Men;[4] which deal with the postcolonial condition of the genders separately. Language and voice are used to emphasise the vastly differing social standing of The Woman Warrior’s protagonists in America in comparison to their ethnic homeland of China, most evident in the character of Brave Orchid who transforms from a well-respected doctor to a silenced individual having migrated to America, far removed from her portrayal as a powerful storyteller in China. Maxine Hong Kingston herself details her own plight in trying to find her own voice; the conflict she finds between trying to speak American-Feminine and Chinese-Feminine prevalent but it is ultimately her lack of confidence in either which results in silence. A silence that manifests itself in sadistic cruelty towards a Chinese class-mate whose silence and shyness is a reflection of her inner trauma of inarticulateness. In trying to force this girl to speak it gives a young Maxine Hong Kingston the hope that she too will be able to find her voice. The cross-generational conflict is also evident — Brave Orchid is embarrassed by her ‘hybridised’ children and refuses to learn English; what she considers a ‘barbarous language’. Instead there is reliance for the second generation to learn the language of their new displaced home, a means for the parents to communicate through their children, only leading to further conflict and embarrassment.

In China Men language is no less integral to portraying the postcolonial condition. The novel revolves predominantly around the Chinese sojourners to the ‘Gold Mountain’ who seek riches in the West. Here they too find hardship and struggle, unfamiliar with the language of these ‘White Demons’ and prohibited from speaking their own language. This prohibition leads to what they consider an illness with the only cure being to talk whenever they please. This ban on native tongues historically has been a policy throughout American history as a means to oppress and force assimilation, with much the same disdain for heritage language shown towards Native American Indian languages. In China Men an undertone of paranoia is ever present, a consequence of this forced silence. The character of Uncle Bun is slowly driven crazy, fearing reprisals for his constant talk of the Communists, such is the power and importance seen in language. Silence and isolation create Chinese communities in both The Woman Warrior and China Men that are introverted and separate from the greater population, portraying them as secretive and distrusting.

‘Talk-story’, too, is important in both novels. In The Woman Warrior it’s a resistance to traditional patriarchal oppression and in China Men a resistance to American colonial oppression; these stories and myths often having a moral or inspirational element. Talk-story is a means of passing on knowledge and advice, with the narrators often adapting and providing their own twist. Maxine Hong Kingston herself does this throughout her novels, utilising traditional Chinese myths and adapting them for modern use. Across numerous other postcolonial texts the passing on and inheritance of folk tales are a means to maintain a sense of heritage. Oral narrative is traditionally important in Asian cultures, so their use by Asian American postcolonial authors is an attempt to maintain this. Amy Tan, in her novels The Joy Luck Club[5] and The Kitchen God’s Wife[6] shows the mother-daughter relationship and conflict prevalent in many Asian American postcolonial novels, which has led to some linking notions of feminism with Asian American postcolonial writing. Though this could be in part be caused by the greater success and proliferation of postcolonial novels from female Asian American writers, much to the chagrin of male writers, such as Frank Chin, a major critic of the ‘feminisation’ of Chinese American men in literature. Amy Tan’s writing also features the conflict between ‘Chinese’ and ‘American’ manners of thinking, mirroring Maxine Hong Kingston. Secrecy and silence, too, are major proponents in the identity crises in these two novels. Female camaraderie through gossiping and story sharing is a concurrent theme in Amy Tan’s novels.

Names as a subset of language are also of the utmost importance in representing postcolonial struggles with identity and culture. In Maxine Hong Kingston’s writings the first generation immigrants make a conscious decision to not adopt Westernised names; Brave Orchid and Moon Orchid retaining their Chinese names long after their departure from China. So too are names prevalent in Larissa Lai’s When Fox is a Thousand[7], where protagonist’s names take on a deeper meaning and representation, helping to span the gap between cultures. Names, as in my personal experience can be a means to integrate and assimilate into the new cultural society free from initial prejudices. My parents’ decision to adopt Western names a testament to this.

In Eric Liu’s The Accidental Asian[8] heritage language loss is at the centre of the author’s crisis of identity. The novel revolves around his experience as a second generation Chinese American, his insecurities spurred by his inability to read letters left by his deceased Father. The novel chronicles his realisation at adolescence that he is different from his classmates and his increasing feeling of isolation. The concept of Chinese-Americans as ‘chopsticks’ a perfect metaphor used by Liu to convey the Chinese-American postcolonial hybridised existence — round on one end, square on the other: attempting to fit into both round and square holes. Inability to communicate fluently in your heritage language often results in identity crises; being unable to converse freely in your heritage language whilst ashamed or embarrassed to speak in your oppressor’s leads to silence.

Chinese-Americans are synonymous when thinking of ‘Asian-American postcolonialism’; due in part to the Chinese’ comparatively long history and rich heritage in the Americas stemming from the gold rush and development of the railways in the mid-19th century. Their history is intertwined with the history of the development of America itself, and they exist as an example of a people who have encountered, and come through great hardship and persecution.

Without the efforts of the Chinese workers in the building of America’s railroads, our development and progress as a nation would have been delayed by years. Their toil in severe weather, cruel working conditions and for meagre wages cannot be under appreciated.[9]

It is an interesting and controversial proposal that your language directly affects your cognition and processing of the world — if these authors were to write of their experiences in their heritage languages would it differ drastically? Can linguistic relativity be the cause of conflict between generations of families, the children unable to comprehend or understand their parents’ struggles fully due to the language barrier? Does the American influence cause some Chinese-Americans to consider their heritage language ‘ching-chong ugly’? ‘Voice’ and ‘Names’ fall under the umbrella of ‘Language’ which in turn is at the very heart of the postcolonial experience.

LANGUAGE CONFLICT:
THE INVISIBLE BARRIER ENCASING ASIAN AMERICA

English speakers predominantly talk about time as if it were horizontal (one pushes deadlines back, expects good times ahead, or moves meetings forward), whereas Mandarin speakers more usually talk about time in a vertical axis (they use the Mandarin equivalents of ‘up’ and ‘down’ to refer to the order of events, weeks, or months). [The Linguist] Boroditsky showed that these differences predict aspects of temporal reasoning by speakers of these two languages.[10] — Lila Gleitman

Cross-generational communication breakdown is by no means an exclusively postcolonial experience; generations are often said to be ‘out of touch’ with one another, leading to conflict and disapproval running rampant, due in part to a lack of mutual understanding and tolerance. But in the postcolonial domain this breakdown of communication has foundations at a much deeper, more rudimentary level. There is literally conflict arising due to the generations speaking different languages to differing standards. In the writings of Chinese America the conflict between Chinese and English is prevalent between first generation Chinese immigrants and their second generation children. The language divide also creates an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality within Asian American diasporas. Asian American communities isolate themselves from society as a whole, a side effect of paranoia and introverted attitudes towards assimilation. This is embodied in Kingston’s The Woman Warrior as outsiders becoming ‘ghosts’.

But could differences in language actually be the reason for conflict at a cognitive level? In The Woman Warrior Brave Orchid is confused her sister has aged so drastically upon meeting her at the airport, as if time in China progresses differently and independently of America, could this be a side effect of differences in the reasoning of time due to language?

The notion that second generation Chinese-American emigrants think differently to their parents is also featured in The Kitchen God’s Wife;

Of course, you probably don’t understand this kind of thinking, how I could be in trouble for Peanut, why I was scared. In China back then, you were always responsible to somebody else. It’s not like here in the United States — freedom, independence, individual thinking, do what you want, disobey your mother.[11]

The first generation believe their children literally think differently, and this could be due to hybridising through American culture, but I feel that it is also through the adoption of the American language. Winnie feels it difficult to share her past with her daughter Pearl because she doesn't feel she will truly understand her, and that Pearl is always trying to correct her; ‘“Oh, Mommy, that’s Chinese history. This is American history.”’[12] Similarly in The Joy Luck Club language proves a roadblock; ‘Or maybe she said butong, not the same thing at all. It was one of those Chinese expressions that means the better half of mixed intentions. I can never remember things I didn’t understand in the first place.[13] The second generation find it increasingly difficult to relate to their cultural heritage because their history is not shared with them due to language difference, so their mother-daughter relationship deteriorates.

“Imagine a daughter not knowing her own mother!” And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds “joy luck” is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation.[14]

But Winnie already has firsthand experience in the difficulties translating Chinese thoughts to American, and vice versa as she recalls an exchange at the airbase of her new husband Wen Fu:

Then all the pilots were talking among themselves, disagreeing, saying Shan Nao could not have meant to give the Japanese new territory. Whose kingdom did he mean? And finally, after much discussion more arguments, many translations, we learned what Shan Nao had really said: “With your help, we won’t be sending the Japanese back to Japan, but to kingdom come.”[15]

Of course, Pearl’s father is a Chinese American translator, who Winnie becomes fascinated by, a man who is able to traverse both languages freely and eloquently, as he himself is a hybridised Chinese American.

And then this man who was both Chinese and American looked at me. He did not say anything for a few seconds, as if he were thinking hard how to translate this carefully. Finally he said, “It means you are surprised by happiness, so much so you cannot express this feeling in ordinary words.” When he said that, I felt he had expressed the deepest wishes of my heart, that someday I too would be caught by happiness, like a fish in a net.[16]

You can feel Winnie’s admiration of this man’s grasp and playfulness with language and ‘ease with the Americans’; ‘…if she said she wanted a name that was prettier than her friend’s, he would give her a twisty name that was impossible for the Chinese tongue to say…’[17] Winnie’s meeting of Jimmy Louie also allows Tan to craft an image of Chinese thinking versus American thinking.

Well, that sounded the same as fate to me. He insisted it was different, an important difference. So I told him, “Maybe you see things in an American way, and I see the same things in a Chinese way. You are saying, ‘Look at the pretty fish in the bowl.’ And I say, ‘Look at the pretty bowl with the fish.’[18]

This notion is reprised in The Joy Luck Club; ‘Chinese people had Chinese opinions. American people had American opinions. And in almost every case, the American version was much better. // It was only later that I discovered there was a serious flaw with the American version. There were too many choices, so it was easy to get confused and pick the wrong thing.’[19] Juggling the two opposing manners of thought is tumultuous. The game of Mah Jong is used as a metaphor for differences between Western (in this case Jewish) thought and Chinese thought.

“What’s the difference between Jewish and Chinese mah jong?” I once asked my mother. I couldn’t tell by her answer if the games were different or just attitude toward Chinese and Jewish people. “Entirely different kind of playing,” she said in her English explanation voice. “Jewish mah jong, they watch only for their own tile, play only with their eyes.” Then she switched to Chinese: “Chinese mah jong, you must play using your head, very tricky. You must watch what everybody else throws away and keep that in your head as well. And if nobody plays well, then the game becomes like Jewish mah jong.”[20]

The use of code-switching between languages is a means to show that the different languages need to be adopted to think in the different playing styles. ‘These kinds of explanations made me feel my mother and I spoke two different languages, which we did. I talked to her in English, she answered back in Chinese.’[21] Passive competency (being able to understand but not speak) in a language is, such in my case, a cause of great frustration.

The Chinese language too seems to inherently contain the superstitions and beliefs of Chinese culture, and Amy Tan integrates this into her writing. ‘“Ai-ya! Daomei!” she cried and covered her mouth. How can you use these kinds of bad-luck words to poison everyone’s future?” // “They are not bad-luck words,” I insisted.[22] Again the Chinese language is a means to condition their manner of thinking reminiscent of linguistic relativity. To the Chinese, words are so powerful they can bring bad luck. ‘“I’ve never heard such poisonous words! What use is it to think this way, to use bad thoughts to attract only bad things?” // On and on she went, like a crazy woman. Now that I remember it, that was when our friendship took on four splits and five cracks.[23] Already Winnie has begun to unburden herself of Chinese superstition, well before coming to America, already setting in motion how she will raise her Chinese-American children free of the oppressions of China. The inability to translate certain Chinese terms to English also leads you to believe the generations may think differently to one another:

This word, taonan? Oh, there is no American word I can think of that means the same thing. But in Chinese, we have lots of different words to describe all kinds of troubles. No, “refugee” is not the meaning, not exactly. Refugee is what you are after you have been taonan and are still alive. And if you are alive, you would never want to talk about what made you taonan.[24]
The Inuit Eskimo, when studied by linguists first proposing Linguistic Determinism, were cited for their many words for the term ‘snow’. Although this was later disproved, it was said their environment influenced their language. Are the Chinese inherently a people born out of suffering, requiring the many words for ‘trouble’? If one only read Chinese American postcolonial novels, full of hardship and heartache, one may be inclined to say a resounding ‘yes’. The pitfalls of translation are also noted in The Joy Luck Club; ‘But really, the words mean much more than that. Maybe they can’t be easily translated because they refer to a sensation that only Chinese people have, as if you were falling headfirst through Old Mr. Chou’s door, then trying to find your way back.’[25]

Numerical processing is another field where linguists have attempted to test Linguistic Relativity, and this is referenced in China Men: ‘Something else I liked about this aunt was her use of exact numbers. ‘Ten thousand rooms per second,’ my mother would have said, ‘Uncountable. Infinite.’[26] This aunt from Hong Kong is acclimatised to Western thinking already, and her language is a reflection of this. This aunt is also proud to speak English, or at least be praised for it: ‘‘He said I speak English very well,’ Auntie said. She was proud of that compliment.’[27]

Chinese American authors often draw attention to the unique accent, pronunciation and grammar inherent to the first generation of Chinese Americans, often spelling words out phonetically; ‘(Fo-laydee, chup-bo — trouble — bossu, day offu, Chinese American words.)’[28] Or pointing out humorous confusion arising from similar sounding Chinese and English words; ‘“And that man, he raise his hand like this, show me his ugly fist and call me worst Fukien landlady. I not from Fukien. Hunh! He know nothing!” She said, satisfied she had put him in his place.[29] This representation of the Chinese American ‘pidgin’ English to some critics adheres to racial stereotypes, holding back the progression of Asian American literature. ‘For in Chinese American discourse, the Chinese body and pidgin English are often taken to be the indicators of the Oriental’s alienness and at times degeneracy. By demarcating themselves from this foreign group, Chinese Americans empower themselves, albeit in an ambiguous manner.’[30] Whilst I feel this is true to an extent, whether or not emulating the pidgin Chinese American English undoes any progress remains to be seen. The truth of the matter is it helps to convey the differences between the generations’ language.

THE IMPORTANCE OF VOICE: METHODS OF COLONIAL AND PATRIARCHAL OPPRESSION

I made up a new genre that is a mix of reality and imagination, and I did that because I was thinking that if immigration authorities read my books they could not find evidence to deport my parents. Now that they are dead, I am very clear about what is fiction and what is non-fiction, and I draw the boundaries very strictly. I am able to say that they were illegals and they were stowaways and he won her a visa at the gambling table. Everything they did was illegal! “Don’t tell these things!” So I did tell, but I did it in a new and strange kind of way.[31] — Maxine Hong Kingston

Silence and secrecy is a tool used by postcolonial writers for numerous purposes; as a means to resist colonial and patriarchal oppression, to reinforce communal loyalties or as an embodiment of colonial paranoia. The manner in which Maxine Hong Kingston’s parents arrived in the United Statescaused a need for secrecy and this shows in The Woman Warrior and China Men, with the importance of secrecy underlined at every turn. ‘The way that I wrote when my mother and father were both alive was very different than the way I write now. In Woman Warrior and China Men, I wrote their stories in such a way that I protected them from being deported.’[32]

This need for secrecy is evident from the very first line in The Woman Warrior; ‘You must not tell anyone,’ my mother said, ‘what I am about to tell you.’[33] The first generation emigrants are even fearful of their own hybridised children, such is the rampant fear of deportation; ‘They would not tell us children because we had been born among ghosts, were taught by ghost, and were ourselves half ghosts. Ghosts are noisy and full of air; they talk during meals. They talk about anything.’[34] ‘Sometimes I hated the ghosts for not letting us talk; sometimes I hated the secrecy of the Chinese. ’Don’t tell,’ said my parents, though we couldn’t tell if wanted to because we didn’t know.’[35] Similarly, this breakdown of communication between generations creates an invisible divide, this undercurrent of distrust creating more silence, even when the second generation seemingly make an attempt to find out more about their cultural heritage, they are met with yet more silence:

‘Is it spirits, Mother? Do you talk to spirits? Are you asking them in or asking them out?’ ‘It’s nothing,’ she said. She never explained anything that was really important. They no longer asked.[36]

Answers are not always forthcoming, leading to a frustrated and fragmented relationship between mother and daughter. The voice of the second generation is in stark contrast to that of their parents.

The immigrants I know have loud voices, unmodulated to American tones even after years away from the village where they called their friendships out across the fields. I have not been able to stop my mother’s screams in public libraries or over telephones.[37]

Whether intentional or not, Kingston creates a humorous image reminiscent of my own experience of my mother, and the countless times I have been woken by a long-distance telephone call to relatives in Vietnam in the early hours of the morning(due to time differences). Although after much vexation and persuasion, she has, for the most part, adopted a ‘modulated British’ tone, telephone calls to Vietnam seemingly resurrect her ‘true’ voice. A strong voice that was needed to carry across oceans and continents back home to Vietnam; at least that was why, for a long time, I thought she adopted this ‘telephone voice’.

Kingston’s inner trauma of inarticulateness is embodied in the guise of a silent Chinese classmate, a physical representation of her own shyness through which she seeks to give herself hope of eventually gaining a voice that isn’t a ‘small person’s voice that makes no impact’.[38] She attempts to coerce this silent girl into talking, first through psychological persuasion, but when this is met with failure, physically attempting to bully her into speech, and finally on to pleading and bribery. The frustration of this exchange is eventually too much for both girls, and both are left in tears. Kingston sees voice as integral into assimilating into American culture. She desperately wants to integrate into society; to be a cheerleader, to have dates, to have a voice.

‘I was walking past your house when you didn’t know I was there. I heard you yell in English and Chinese. You weren’t just talking. You were shouting. I heard you shout. You were saying, “Where are you?” Say that again. Go ahead, just the way you did at home.’ I yanked harder on the hair, but steadily, not jerking. I did not want to pull it out. ‘Go ahead. Say, “Where are you?” Say it loud enough for your sister to come. Call her. Make her come help you. Call her name. I’ll stop if she comes. So call. Go ahead.’[39]

The outside world to Kingston is intimidating, far removed from the relative safety of the home domain. But Kingston is seemingly even envious of this girl’s ability to not only talk, but to shout. Even at home Kingston is quiet, introverted. At home her mother, Brave Orchid, prohibits speaking Chinese at the dinner table, but does not acknowledge her children speaking English. The conflict between English and Chinese, with a lack of confidence in using either, results in silence and inarticulateness. But Kingston fears that this voice she so desperately seeks, will be a voice that is not her own; ‘You can’t entrust your voice to the Chinese, either; they want to capture your voice for their own use. They want to fix up your tongue to speak for them.’[40] The first generation speak through their children, such in the case of Maxine being forced to seek ‘reparation candy’. Kingston is even dismayed by the very sound of her own voice, so deeply ingrained is her inner turmoil.

‘You have what we call a pressed-duck voice,’ she said… And she was right: if you squeezed the duck hung up to dry in the east window, the sound that was my voice would come out of it. She was a woman of such power that all we immigrants and descendants of immigrants were to her family for ever for bringing us here and for finding us jobs, and she had named my voice.[41]

In China Men the gold-rush sojourners are prohibited from talking, and this prohibition culminates in a sickness. ‘The men who had come earlier also said that the plantation had a rule that they not talk at work, but this rule was so absurd, he thought he must have misheard tones.’[42]

When the demon beat his horse and dust rose from its brown flanks, he coughed from his very depths. All Chinese words conveniently a syllable each, he said, ‘Get — that — horse — dust — away — from — me — you — dead — white — demon. Don’t — stare — at — me — with — those — glass — eyes. I — can’t — take — this life.’ He felt better after having his say. He did not even mind the despair which dispelled upon his speaking it. The suicides who walked into the ocean or jumped off the mountains were not his kindred.[43]

The only cure for this sickness caused by language prohibition is, as you’d expect, to talk. ‘He awoke certain that he had to cure himself by talking whenever he pleased.’ ‘Uncles and Brothers, I have diagnosed our illness. It is congestion from not talking. What we have to do is talk and talk.’[44]

This language prohibition is reminiscent of the policies used for forced assimilation of Native American Indians in the 19th century. They were prohibited from speaking their native language as well as not being allowed to practise their own religions. This was a means of forced assimilation which was largely successful; the fact that only between 30-60 Native American languages are still being passed down to new generations when originally, at the time of European settlement in the United States, there were upwards of 600 languages being spoken, is a testament to this.[45]

Bak Goong went to Christian church once or twice, but they talked ‘baptism’, and he quit. He asked the converts, ‘Who’s the pig that got caught?’ They didn’t even talk like China Men any more, the salt gone from their speech. ‘Thank God,’ they said instead of ‘Your mother’s cunt.’[46] In the novels of Amy Tan, she draws attention to the importance of voice in a more subtle manner, through the use of allusions and metaphor. Waverly Jong is a Chess prodigy; here the use of Chess is a metaphor for the inherent secrecy of Chinese America. ‘It is a game of secrets in which one must show and never tell.’[47] Much like Tan’s use of the game of Mah Jong to covertly emphasise the difference in Chinese and Western thinking, Chess is used as a means for Waverly to express a confidence she is not able to through speech. But Chess also gives her the tools to strategise a way to communicate with her mother through a reverse psychology inherent to the game;

I desperately wanted to go, but I bit back my tongue. I knew she would not let me play among strangers. So as we walked home I said in a small voice that I didn’t want to play in the local tournament. They would have American rules. If I lost, I would bring shame on my family.[48]

Ultimately Chess becomes the catalyst for silence to once again come into play, amidst the breakdown of a mother-daughter relationship. Embarrassed by her mother’s showing off, Waverly refuses to play. What instead ensues, is a game of silence between mother and daughter, each too proud to speak to one another, strategising how to force the other to make a move. The game of Chess has transcended to their relationship.

The character of Pearl in The Kitchen God’s Wife is a speech therapist, Tan’s acknowledgement of the importance of voice and language, she herself holding a master’s degree in English and Linguistics.

But Pearl has a good job, a speech therapist for retarded children, although she told me never to say that. A few years ago, she said, “We don’t call them retarded or handicapped children anymore. We say ‘children with disabilities.’ We put children first, the disabilities second. And I don’t do just speech therapy. I’m what’s called a speech and language clinician. And I work only with children who have moderate to severe communicative disorders.[49]

Winnie, Pearl’s mother, is unable to say the title of her daughter’s profession and is concerned her daughter may find her ‘retarded’. ‘I practised saying this many times. I still have those words in my purse. I still can’t say them. So now maybe Pearl thinks I’m retarded, too.’[50] Pearl’s profession again makes me think of The Woman Warrior; where Brave Orchid performs her own version of ‘speech therapy’ on a young Kingston, cutting her fraenum so she can be eloquent.

‘I cut it so that you would not be tongue-tied. Your tongue would be able to move in any language. You’ll be able to speak languages that are completely different from one another. You’ll be able to pronounce anything. Your fraenum looked too tight to do those things, so I cut it.’ ‘But isn’t “a ready tongue an evil”?’ ‘Things are different in this ghost country.’[51]

This highlights Brave Orchid’s hypocritical and conflicting approaches to voice and language, as she herself has already refused to learn the ‘barbarous’ language, but cuts Kingston’s fraenum anyway, so she is able to speak it. This contradiction is at the heart of Kingston’s belief that the first generation wants to capture your voice for their own use and also paints Brave Orchid in the paradoxical figure of a ‘Mimic Man’; ‘a contradictory figure who simultaneously reinforces colonial authority and disturbs it.’[52]

Voice also encapsulates the differences in the role of women between China and America, another source of conflict as the second generation seeks to find their own voice whilst also juggling conflicting concepts of ‘femininity’: ‘And all the time I was having to turn myself American-feminine, or no dates.[53]

Traditionally, women were to stay in their father’s home until they married, whereupon they would most likely enter their husband’s home to care for his family, to bear and teach his children, and carry on his name in a patrilineal, patrifocal, and patriarchal society. As a symbolic and public representation of society, she is empowered as the keeper of the private-domestic life, of family secrets and stories; a guardian of male descent kinship lines; and a performer of rituals, values, language, and culture.[54]

The emigration to the United States would seem a reprieve from the ‘patrilineal, patrifocal, and patriarchal’ oppressions imposed in China, and to an extent it is. Brave Orchid is portrayed as a confident speaker and story-teller; ‘My mother, who is a champion talker.’[55] The young Maxine on the other hand, keeps her emotions and feelings inside, until they finally erupt in an outburst targeted towards her mother whose stories have only lead to confuse her: ‘They scramble me up. You lie with stories.’[56] Like in The Joy Luck Club these rebellious outbursts are a recipe for disaster. ‘Well, I don’t know if it’s explicitly stated in the law, but you can’t ever tell a Chinese mother to shut up. You could be charged as an accessory to your own murder.’[57]

Brave Orchid’s tales of powerful women such as Fa Mu Lan would on face value be seen as a means to empower her daughter, but discretely they reaffirm notions of patriarchy. So ingrained in Chinese women is this patriarchal view that the very ideologies used to reinforce these views are repeatedly recycled by Chinese women themselves through their own voice and talk-stories. ‘There’s no profit in raising girls. Better to raise geese than girls.’[58] Inadvertently, Brave Orchid and then Kingston herself, recycle these ideologies that ‘Break the women with their own tongues.’[59] When Moon Orchid arrives in America she has yet to be hybridised and conditioned towards Western ideals of politeness and finds the children’s mannerisms rude reaffirming the differences between cultures.

‘Why didn’t you teach your girls to be demure?’ she ventured. ‘Demure!’ Brave Orchid yelled. ‘They are demure. They’re so demure, they barely talk.’ It was true that the children made no conversation. Moon Orchid would try to draw them out. They must have many interesting savage things to say, raised as they’d been in the wilderness.

Amy Tan’s ‘Joy Luck Mothers’ through their good intentions, look to protect their daughters from the oppression they have endured in China. They wish for their Chinese American daughters to have a new, better life than which they have experienced. The Joy Luck Mother’s stories are used to empower their daughters to be strong, independent and humble.

In America I will have a daughter just like me. But over there nobody will say her worth is measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch. Over there nobody will look down on her, because I will make her speak only perfect American English. And over there she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow! She will know my meaning, because I will give her this swan — a creature that become more than what was hoped for.[60]

The stories shared between generations intra and inter-generationally are a means to reconnect with ethnic origins. The power of voice is a way to show loyalty and community, Tan uses secrecy as a means to create a bond between the ‘Joy Luck Mother’s’, a sense of unity in shared experiences. The characters of Winnie and Helen in The Kitchen God’s Wife also show the burden carried by the first generation, Winnie too afraid to share her past and experiences in China with her daughter. Similarly, Pearl keeps her multiple sclerosis secret from her mother and both only find happiness when unburdened of these secrets. The first generation guard each other’s secrets, not wishing to burden their children, but in the end this only helps to heighten the divisions between them. Like Winnie, resolution is only found when generations communicate openly about heritage and culture. This is a theme concurrent in the writings of Amy Tan and of Chinese American postcolonialism as a whole.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?
NAMES AS A MEANS OF COLONIAL RESISTANCE

It’s his name. He was conflicted. Didn’t know where he fit in. Been ripped out of his world and stuck into yours… It’s hard to still be Lawrence Choudhry when everyone sees you as Lawrence Kutner. All his Anglo name gave him was the illusion he was someone he wasn’t, you were being emotional, not rational. You didn’t understand him.

You wanted to make him happy by shutting out his pain. When he looked happy you assumed the pain was gone. It just got buried deeper. Leaving him tormented about who he was, until finally he put a bullet…[61] — Gregory House

In this episode of medical drama House M.D., the character of Gregory House tries to explain the reason behind the sudden and unexpected suicide of his colleague Lawrence Kutner (played by actor Kal Penn). Face to face with Kutner’s adoptive parents, he deduces his psychological anguish and emotional turmoil are a result of his Western name. His name is the source of a crisis of identity prevalent in postcolonial novels. Gregory House’s dissection and diagnosing are usually confined to the field of medicine, but his findings here are poignant.

I can relate to this summation of the importance of names. My parents came to the United Kingdom as refugees of the Vietnam War in 1975, and one of the first things my Father did upon reaching Britain was to give us Western names, including a new family name. I was thus born into this new Western family name. I remember as a young child in Primary School being perplexed that a Vietnamese friend had such a different name from me but never really pursuing the reason behind this. It was not until a few years later and shortly before my Father passed away that I asked him the reason behind our Western names. He told me it was so that we could have opportunities, free of the prejudice and discrimination he feared that we as refugees may face. A new name would assist in our social and cultural assimilation and integration. The political and social climate when my family first arrived in the United Kingdom was undoubtedly different to today, the Vietnam War was greatly unpopular and the influx of Vietnamese refugees to nations across the globe was a cause of great controversy. I understand his reasoning behind our names, but have always felt a part of my heritage was lost in our adopting Western names. My name has always been a source of embarrassment when meeting new Vietnamese people of my age. I feel as though it’s a betrayal of my heritage as I have to explain why it is we have them. We do still use our original Vietnamese names, and I was given a Vietnamese name at birth, albeit used completely unofficially and only with family and Vietnamese not of my generation. On paper I am officially Richard William Easton.

So upon watching this episode of House it drew these tumultuous emotions to the surface once again, though never have they approached anything near reminiscent of suicidal thoughts. In fact, the reason behind Lawrence Kutner’s suicide is never explicitly clarified in the programme. Though in reality, the actor Kal Penn had just joined the new Obama administration as a liaison with the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, and this necessitated his character be written out of the show. This context perhaps gives even greater emphasis to this piece of dialogue as an interpretation of names in postcolonialism, and emphatically draws attention to their importance in creating a sense of self identity. Kal Penn has also been involved in other works that could be considered ‘postcolonial’ such as the 2007 film The Namesake[62], which again dealt with the importance of names as a means of cultural assimilation and self identity. In his 2005 comedy, Harold and Kumar Get the Munchies[63]; names as a postcolonial device are once again featured. In this scene Harold (Korean-American actor John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) are stopped by a police officer for jay-walking:

Police Officer: What kind of name is ‘Kumar’? What is it, like five ‘O’s or two ‘U’s? Kumar: No it’s actually one ‘u’. Police Officer: Yeah, bullshit. What happened to good American names like ‘Dave’ or ‘Jim’ y’know? Harold: ‘Harold’. Police Officer: ‘Harold’, now that’s a great name. You should be proud of that name, son.

John Cho’s character can only be described as the archetypal, stereotyped representation of the assimilated Asian American; non-confrontational, complicit and overly eager to please. He would, as Ronald Takaki has noted, be considered symbolic of the ‘Model Minority’[64]; Asian Americans in the media have been widely celebrated in their achievements and held up as a minority group following the ‘American Dream’. Completely overlooking the years of persecution they had endured in years gone by.

Kumar: Now why don’t you just take this quiet little Asian guy with the Anglicised name that treats you so well, and give him a couple other tickets. Better yet, just take him to jail!

Kal Penn, in much of his filmography, integrates postcolonial commentary even in his comedic roles. ‘Kal Penn’ is in fact only his screen name, derived from his birth name Kalpen Suresh Modi. It is not uncommon for actors in Hollywood to use screen-names, but perhaps this could be part of the reason ‘names’ is a recurring theme in many of his roles. He has also served as a visiting lecturer in Asian American studies at the University of Pennsylvania, so his vested interest in postcolonialism is not surprising. His new role in the Obama administration also shows the importance placed on the Asian American community in modern America.

The postcolonial authors I have read also place a strong emphasis on the importance of names in their writings. In dealing with the crises of identity inherent in postcolonialism, their importance is a major proponent in finding one’s self. Larissa Lai wrote When Fox is a Thousand during the height of the ‘identity politics’ era in Canada, a time when many works were produced dealing with gender, race and inequality and looking to break silences and disclose secrets. The Chinese’ history in Canada mirrors the experience of Chinese sojourners to the ‘Gold Mountain’ that was the United States, in that they had to endure the same hardship and long working hours for low wages, as well as overt discrimination through political policies such as the Head Tax. The Chinese were the only ethnic group forced to pay such a tax upon entry to Canada. The Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 looked to further prohibit the migration of Chinese to Canada; again, the Chinese were the only ethnic group to be persecuted in such manner. Larissa Lai describes growing up as an alienating experienced amongst the Vietnamese and Korean Wars, so her writing When Fox is a Thousand was ‘both liberating and debilitating as it meant scrutinising oppressions and issues of race.’[65]

Larissa Lai paid specific attention to the names given to her protagonists, going so far as to provide contextual, historical and personal reasons for the choices. Take Artemis Wong whose introduction is made in the opening stages of the novel:

You say: Funny name for a Chinese girl. I will correct you. Chinese-Canadian. Make no mistake, because her name is a name that marks a generation of immigrant children whose parents love the idea of the Enlightenment and thought they would find it blooming in the full heat of its rational fragrance here in North America.[66]

The first generation’s choice of name for their children is another way that they may pass their hopes and aspirations on to a new generation, and like The Woman Warrior, a means for them to live and communicate through their children. ‘How seriously her parents considered the effect on destiny in the act of her naming, I don’t know.’[67] The other protagonists’ names follow this pattern of Anglicised choice; Mercy, Diane, Claude, Eden. These could most likely be seen as conscious decisions from Larissa Lai, she herself the recipient of a Western name. These elaborate explanations for name choices a result of her voyage of self-discovery. Another character, Leda, introduced later in the novel, another subject of analysis; ‘Like her namesake, interposing her body between human and the divine, Leda spans the gap between cultures.’[68] Mercy is another character whose name plays an integral role in her identity. In the latter stages of the novel Mercy adopts the name Ming. This can be seen as a two-prong reaction; first as a means of reconnecting with her Chinese heritage, and secondly as a means of resisting patriarchal oppression of traditional Chinese culture, Ming traditionally being a Chinese male’s name. The choice of name could also perhaps be homage to the Fox myth which is used heavily throughout the novel, which was written during the Ming Dynasty. When Fox is a Thousand differs from the writings of Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan in that the novel deals nearly exclusively with the lives and tribulations of the new generation of immigrant children. Tan and Kingston instead attempt to compare and contrast the differing generations, as a means to bridge the gap between the first generation immigrants and their hybridised children.

In Amy Tan’s Kitchen God’s Wife and The Joy Luck Club names feature just as prominently as a postcolonial device. Amy Tan embraces how attitudes towards the Chinese in America have changed; her protagonists are often young, successful Chinese-American women. But whilst Lai to an extent overlooks the first generation, Tan acknowledges the tension in mother-daughter relationships through her writing, which she herself has experienced. Her characters often have Anglicised names as well as Chinese names, allowing them to transcend cultures.

“So Jing-Mei, you go to school now?” says Auntie Lin. “Her name is June. They all go by their American names,” says Auntie Ying. “That’s okay,” I say, and I really mean it. In fact, it’s even becoming fashionable for American-born Chinese to use their Chinese names.’[69]

This passage both embodies the changing attitudes towards their Chinese names, and the division and underlying tension between mothers and daughters. Whilst they have Western names as a means of social integration, there is a movement towards ethnicity and individuality as being ‘fashionable’. Tan goes so far as to name one of her characters after the fictitious street they are born on; ‘Waverly Place Jong, my official name for important American documents. But my family called me Meimei, “Little Sister.” I was the youngest, the only daughter.’[70] It is as though her name is a means to drive home her status as ‘American-born’ for ‘important American documents’, a consequence of the historical persecution of the Chinese-American community as outsiders and as a means to assimilate. Amy Tan at birth received the Chinese name ‘An-Mai’, meaning ‘American Blessing’ so this could be a reference to her own upbringing. Even in Tan’s secondary characters, names are a subtle nod to the generational conflicts. In The Kitchen God’s Wife ‘New Aunt’ and ‘Old Aunt’ are the embodiments of the new and old customs. ‘New Aunt’ is a modern, independent woman, whilst ‘Old Aunt’ upholds the traditional Chinese customs. This mirrors the conflict in the Chinese-American generation. The first generation in Amy Tan’s novels also adapt their Chinese names towards Western standards; in Kitchen God’s Wife ‘Hulan’ becomes ‘Helen’, ‘Jiang Weili’ becomes ‘Winnie’ (who was modelled after Tan’s own mother; Daisy Tan).

The approach to names exhibited by Eric Liu’s father in The Accidental Asian shows a different approach to assimilation, a ‘selective assimilation’ as he defines it:

What he did with his name is a good example. Unlike some of his Chinese immigrant peers, my father never took on an “American” first name like Charlie or Chet. His concession to convention was to shorten “Chao-hua” to “Chao” and to pronounce his surname as loo instead of leeeoo — so that to the white world, he was, phonetically, chow loo. I suppose that still sounds pretty foreign to many people (including his own mother). But by carrying himself as if the name “Chao Liu” was as American as “Chuck Lewis”, he managed, in effect, to make it so.[71]

In The Woman Warrior Brave Orchid not adopting a Western name reaffirms the character’s stubbornness and resistance towards cultural assimilation, much like her refusal to learn the ‘barbarous language’. Similarly, Brave Orchid’s sister is only ever referred to as Moon Orchid and the two characters are often portrayed as ‘fish out of water’; completely detached from American customs and also unintentionally somewhat comedic in their actions and behaviour. Let us not forget the title of the opening chapter; No Name Woman. To not give this woman a name is to deny her very existence, as if by mentioning her name it drudges up unwanted memories. Kingston is unable to ask about this Aunt with no name, who brought shame to her family, so instead conjures a fantastical story about her, and what lead to her suicide.

But names can also be a source of embarrassment and shame, turning confident speakers silent:

But when we asked his name, he suddenly stood still. He and his sister looked at one another and down at their shoes. The girl, who was older, pointed to her brother and muttered something, and he turned red. ‘What?’ I asked. She said it again. It was his Chinese name, and we could hardly hear it. ‘Her name is Lucille,’ he said. And Lucille was easy for him to say and easy to hear. He was proud to be able to give an American name though it wasn’t his. So, they’d already learned to be shamed by a Chinese name.[72]

But in truth, they had already been given names; ‘They were FOBs all right. Fresh Off the Boat.’[73] Kingston already distancing herself from these children who did not exhibit the level of cultural assimilation she herself has experienced. The power of names is also used by a young Kingston to reassure and shield her from the attention of boys; ‘I used to add ‘brother’ silently to boys’ names. It hexed the boys, who would or would not ask me to dance, and made them less scary and as familiar and deserving of benevolence as girls.’[74]

Names are tantamount to protecting or hiding the past; ‘The Chinese I know hide their names; sojourners take new names when their lives change and guard their real names with silence.’[75] Names in the novels I have studied are used as either a means to retain ties with ethnic homelands, or a means to break them and assimilate into a new culture and protect and hide the past.

CONCLUSION:
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE AND BEING A ‘HYBRID’

To struggle against this kind of erasure, many Asian Americans sought an alternative identity to what was being offered in the dominant culture — the nonchoice between being either different and inferior or the same and invisible, between eternal alien and assimilated mascot. That is why cultural nationalism has been so crucial in Asian Americans’ struggles for self-determination: insisting on a unitary identity seemed the only effective means of opposing and defending oneself against marginalization. This strategically constructed unitary identity, a closed essence sharply dividing “Asian American” from “Asian”, was a way to conjure up and inscribe our faces on the blank pages and screens of America’s hegemonic culture and was necessarily exclusive rather than inclusive, levelling such critical differences as gender, nationality and class.[76] — Elaine H. Kim

Language is a key theme that also spans postcolonial texts from other Asian nations, including those from Vietnamese-American authors whose journey to the West was under very different circumstances to the gold rush sojourners. The influx of migration triggered by the Vietnam War, lead many Vietnamese refugees to find asylum across the globe, with the largest numbers congregating in North America. Similar to the Chinese, the Vietnamese formed their own ‘China Towns’, known as ‘Little Saigons’, reflecting their disdain towards the North Vietnamese government. The Vietnamese postcolonial novels share many features with their Chinese-American counterparts, such as in Nguyen Qui Duc’s Where the Ashes Are: the Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family[77] and Jason M. Freeman’s Hearts of Sorrow: Vietnamese-American Lives[78] a compilation of stories told by Vietnamese-Americans of differing backgrounds. Here the breakdown of traditional family values mirrors conflict found in writings of Chinese heritage. Being of Vietnamese descent, I would have liked to analyse the writings of Vietnamese-America, but in truth, I found in their work a lacking in comparison to their Chinese-American counterparts. They lacked the elegance in fusing tradition and myth with American culture which the likes of Kingston, Tan, and Lai do so effortlessly. Instead more chronicling the Vietnamese’ migration from an autobiographical stance. This could be due in part to the Vietnamese’ relatively new history in the United States of America and formation of ‘Vietnamese-Americans’. The literature of Chinese-America benefits from a rich history and rooting in the United States.

In truth, I had made my conclusions on the importance of language in postcolonialism long before even beginning to put words to paper. As a ‘British Vietnamese’ I’d long felt the conflict of being a ‘hybrid’; the inner conflict of language and culture felt before I had even encountered the concept of ‘postcolonialism’(this in itself disproving Linguistic Determinism). Being only passive competent in Vietnamese I can’t help but feel I’ve lost a part of my heritage; for me, language is key to self-identity. It has also shaped who I am. Like a young Maxine Hong Kingston, being embarrassed by my poor Vietnamese, and ashamed to speak English in front of Vietnamese elders, often results in an awkward silence. Decisions out of my control have also shaped who I am, such in the case of my name. Though fully understanding of the reason behind it, I still cannot help at times but to feel embarrassed. The reading, researching and writing of this dissertation has been simultaneously both therapeutic and disconcerting, requiring I approach inner traumas and what it exactly means to be ‘hybridised’.

Larissa Lai’s approach is one I would like to emulate:

I don’t read Chinese. I read it in English translation. And I am fine with that. I have very little interest in those old colonial tropes of the “authentic” because they are invested in the production of an exotic other in order to maintain the centrality of the white European subject. I like the idea of quoting anthropological texts back at the anthropologists, infusing it with my own social and political interests quite explicitly before passing the parcel on.[79] Lai’s analysis that ‘Identity-based work was at once liberating and debilitating because it required the use of the language of oppression in order to undo oppression’[80] is poignant. The great success of these postcolonial novels is that through English they embody the conflict of language, as well as being written in a language that a new generation of hybridised readers can relate to. The fact that language conflict is a concurrent theme running through any postcolonial novel you read is a testament to its importance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alegre, Miel and Weich, Dave, ‘Maxine Hong Kingston After the Fire’ in Powells.com Interviews, http://www.powells.com/authors/kingston.html [accessed 15 April 2009]

Doolittle, Hon. John T., ‘Speech to U.S. House of Representatives, Thursday, April 29, 1999’ in Chinese-American Contribution to Transcontinental Railroad http://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese.html [accessed 01 May 2009] Duc, Nguyen Qui, Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family (USA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1994)

Freeman, Jason M., Hearts of Sorrow: Vietnamese-American Lives (California: Stanford University Press, 1989)

Gleitman, Lila and Papafragou, Anna, ‘Language and Thought’ in Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development (Cambridge: CUP, 2004) Ho, Wendy, In Her Mother’s House — The Politics of Mother-Daughter Writing (USA: Alta Mira Press, 1999) Kim, Elaine H. ‘Foreword’ in Reading the Literatures of Asian America ed. By Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Amy Ling (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992)

Kingston, Maxine Hong, China Men (New York: Picador 1981)

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (London: Penguin Books 1990) p.312

Kingston, Maxine Hong, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Amongst Ghosts (New York: Picador, 1981)

Lai, Larissa, When Fox is a Thousand (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004)

Liu, Eric, The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker (New York: Random House, 2004) Ma, Sheng-mei, Immigrant Subjectivities in Asian American and Asian Diaspora Literatures (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998)

Reyhner, Jon, ‘Policies toward American Indian Languages’ in Language Loyalties ed. By James Crawford (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) Sharpe, Jenny, ‘Figures of Colonial Resistance’, in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader ed. By Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (New York: Routledge, 1995) Takaki, Ronald, A History of Asian Americans — Strangers From a Different Shore (New York: Back Bay Books, 1998)

Tan, Amy, The Joy Luck Club (London: Vintage Books, 1998)

Tan, Amy Kitchen God’s Wife (London: Harper Perennial, 2008) Whorf, Benjamin Lee, Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (USA: MIT Press, 1998)

Harold and Kumar Get the Munchies (UK name) dir. Danny Leiner (MGM-Entertainment, 2005)

House M.D. Season 5 Episode 20 (Fox Television, 2009)

The Namesake dir. Mira Nair (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2007)

[1] George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (London: Penguin Books 1990) p.312

[2] Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (USA: MIT Press, 1998)

[3]Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Amongst Ghosts (New York: Picador, 1981)

[4]Maxine Hong Kingston, China Men (New York: Picador 1981)

[5] Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club (London: Vintage Books, 1998)

[6] Amy Tan, Kitchen God’s Wife (London: Harper Perennial, 2008)

[7]Larissa Lai, When Fox is a Thousand (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004)

[8]Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker (New York: Random House, 2004)

[9] Hon. John T. Doolittle ‘Speech to U.S. House of Representatives, Thursday, April 29, 1999’ in Chinese-American Contribution to Transcontinental Railroad http://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese.html [accessed 01 May 2009]

[10] Lila Gleitman and Anna Papafragou, ‘Language and Thought’ in Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development (Cambridge: CUP, 2004) p.648

[11] Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife p.132

[12] Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife p.172

[13] Tan, The Joy Luck Club p.19

[14] Tan, The Joy Luck Club p.40

[15] Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife p.165

[16] Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife p.304

[17] Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife p.305

[18] Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife p.341

[19] Tan, The Joy Luck Club p.191

[20] Tan, The Joy Luck Club p.33

[21] Tan, The Joy Luck Club p.44

[22] Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife p.191

[23] Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife p.191

[24] Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife p.207

[25] Tan, The Joy Luck Club p.188

[26] Kingston, China Men p.201

[27] Kingston, China Men p.202

[28] Kingston, China Men p.189

[29] Tan, The Joy Luck Club p.200

[30] Sheng-Mei Ma, Immigrant Subjectivities in Asian American and Asian Diaspora Literatures (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998) p.27

[31] Miel Alegre and Dave Weich, ‘Maxine Hong Kingston After the Fire’ in Powells.com Interviews, http://www.powells.com/authors/kingston.html [accessed 15 April 2009]

[32] Alegre & Weich, Maxine Hong Kingston After the Fire

[33] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.11

[34] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.165

[35] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.164

[36] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.163

[37] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.18

[38] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.50

[39] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.160

[40] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.152

[41] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.172

[42] Kingston, China Men p.101

[43] Kingston, China Men p.106

[44] Kingston, China Men p.116

[45] Jon Reyhner, ‘Policies toward American Indian Languages’ in Language Loyalties ed. By James Crawford (Chicago: University of Chicago Press)

[46] Kingston, China Men p.113

[47] Tan, The Joy Luck Club p.95

[48] Tan, The Joy Luck Club p.96

[49] Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife p.82

[50] Tan, The Joy Luck Club p.82

[51] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.148

[52] Jenny Sharpe, ‘Figures of Colonial Resistance’, in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader ed. By Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (New York: Routledge, 1995) p.99

[53] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.49

[54] Wendy Ho, In Her Mother’s House — The Politics of Mother-Daughter Writing (USA: Alta Mira Press, 1999) p.119

[55] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.180

[56] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.180

[57] Tan, The Joy Luck Club p.173

[58] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.48

[59] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.49

[60] Tan, The Joy Luck Club p.17

[61] House M.D. Season 5 Episode 20 (Fox Television, 2009)

[62] The Namesake dir. Mira Nair (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2007)

[63] Harold and Kumar Get the Munchies (UK name) dir. Danny Leiner (MGM-Entertainment, 2005)

[64] Ronald Takaki, A History of Asian Americans — Strangers From a Different Shore (New York: Back Bay Books, 1998) p. 474

[65] Larissa Lai, p.254

[66] Larissa Lai, p.20

[67] Larissa Lai, p.20

[68] Larissa Lai, p.126

[69] Tan, Joy Luck Club p.37

[70] Tan, Joy Luck Club p.91

[71] Eric Liu p.21

[72] Kingston, China Men p.207

[73] Kingston, China Men p.207

[74] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.18

[75] Kingston, The Woman Warrior p.13

[76] Elaine H. Kim ‘Foreword’ in Reading the Literatures of Asian America ed. By Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Amy Ling (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992) p. xii

[77]Nguyen Qui Duc, Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family (USA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1994)

[78]Jason M. Freeman, Hearts of Sorrow: Vietnamese-American Lives (California: Stanford University Press, 1989)

[79] Lai p.257

[80] Lai p.254