The East/West Relationship in ＂The Crippled Tree＂

10.29962/TOJA.200804.0012

Xu-Ding Wang

East/West relationship ； cultural identity ； cultural exchange ； cultural conflict

真理大學人文學報

6期（2008 / 04 / 30）

225 - 240

英文

This essay examines the East/West relationship in ＂The Crippled Tree＂ by Han Suyin whose life has been lived on the boundaries of many worlds, personally, professionally, political, and culturally; not surprisingly her writing is equally concerned with exploring the margins, the intersections, the boundaries of human experience. In ＂The Crippled Tree＂, Han Suyin's treatment of the East/West relations can be divided into three major parts. First she ＂decolonizes＂ China, at least metaphorically, by exposing the role of the West and of Japan in the oppression of the Chinese people, often through the agency of the old feudal Chinese order itself, with the inevitable loss of cultural and national identity that follows such a process. In this process she explores the Chinese struggle to restore lost cultural and national dignity through the recreation of both her family history and herself. Secondly, Han Suyin reflects the Chinese history through her parents' family sagas, which stand for two very different cultures: her father's Chinese culture and her mother's Western one. She forms a very interesting comparison between the two as well as a sharp contrast at the same time, and the exchanges and the conflicts between the two cultures is an important focus throughout her work. The sagas of both her father's and her mother's families are also used by Han Suyin, the writer, to define herself even as she writes them. Writing her own version of China and her family, that is, she simultaneously writes herself.