Transculturation : writing beyond dualism

Abstract

This study focuses on three works by Chinese American women writers. It is an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural investigation of transculturation. The prefixes “inter-,” “cross-” and “trans-” explored throughout suggest dynamism. The narrations of the dynamics of each immigrant culture come from the writers’ dual position of Chinese American cultural backgrounds. In writing, these writers form protagonists in circumstances of compromise and negotiation between the expectations of the two cultural ideologies. The encounter of two cultures produces possibilities and potentials in which cultural subjects (Chinese immigrants and Americans) and cultures adapt to one another and create something new. The term “transculturation” conceptualizes this process of change, which is defined as a mutually influencing process in which Chinese and American cultures transform and are transformed in their constant contact. This study presents the changing process in the motifs of memory, self, symbols, space, allegory, and ambiguity respectively in the six chapters of textual analyses. In a transcultural discourse, the difference from others is embraced as individuality specific to a certain person or culture. Thus, different elements exist when cultural subjects come into contact. This coexistence reinforces the importance of cultural negotiation in the multicultural US.