Religion and Cultural Identity in Chinese American Literature: The Image of Gwan Gung in Writings by Frank Chin and David Henry Hwang

張金櫻(Chin-Ying Chang)

cultural identity ； Gwan Gung ； Stuart Hall ； stereotype ； Frank Chin ； David Henry Hwang

小說與戲劇

19卷2期（2009 / 10 / 01）

91 - 116

英文

This paper discusses the significant role of religion in defining cultural identity for Americans with Chinese ancestry by tracing the adoptation and transformation of the image of Gwan Gung (Master Gwan) in Chinese American literature. Gwan Gung was a historical figure in the Three Kingdoms period (A. D. 220-80), as well as a literary hero, such as in Lo Kuan-chung's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and later became a deity in Chinese folk beliefs, symbolizing righteousness, fraternal bonds, loyalty, and wisdom. The image of Gwan Gung is adopted and transformed by the Chinese American writers Frank Chin and David Henry Hwang. In Chin’s writings, Gwan Gung is a cultural and political image representing group unity, an indicator of ethnic and cultural characteristics, as well as a symbol of refusal to be homogenized into the dominant group. David Henry Hwang challenges this perspective by illustrating the improbability of Chinese Americans asserting a genuine version of Gwan Gung in America. The powerless Gwan Gung in his plays manifests the problem of claiming a primitive and unchanging cultural origin. As an advocate of identity politics, Frank Chin endeavors to establish a foundation for defining cultural identity (or identification). Thus, his celebration of Gwan Gung is not in order to sustain an element of cultural heritage, but instead a call for Chinese Americans to claim their existence and emphasize their cultural distinctiveness within the host society. Hwang, like Chin, celebrates the Chinese American historical experience of struggle. However, unlike Chin, he presumes that the Chinese American heroic/literary tradition should not be built on an image like Gwan Gung, which represents the home country or cultural heritage, but rather on their predecessors' undefeatable fighting spirit. The significance of both Chin's and Hwang's use of Gwan Gung is the indispensability of religion in the face of the hybridization and diversification of cultural experience in a multi-cultural society.

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