再造華美女性文學傳統：任璧蓮的《夢娜在應許之地》

Reinventing a Chinese American Women's Tradition in Gish Jen's Mona in the Promised Land

馮品佳(Pin-Chia Feng)

《歐美研究》 32卷4期 (2002/12) Pp. 675-704

https://doi.org/10.7015/JEAS.200212.0675

摘要

華美女性文本母親的主題屢見不鮮，形成具有歷史意義的華美女性傳統。本篇論文將《夢娜在應許之地》置放於華美文學傳統的創造與其他華美女性文本脈絡中，討論母女主題的縱軸發展，並研究文本中有如「彩虹聯盟」的橫向社群，如何一方面反應美國民權運動族裔平等的政治理念，以文化混雜對抗主流文化之霸權，並經由角色族裔性之不斷變身質疑族裔與文化的道地性；另一方面則思考族裔之間團結之可能。任璧蓮以帶著嘲諷但包容的慧黠，一面化解母女衝突，一面發展不同族裔之間的關係性政治，提供帶著希望的喜劇視域，為華美女性小說開創喜劇傳統。

關鍵字

華裔美國文學 ； 女性文學傳統 ； 關係性政治 ； 任璧蓮 ； 《夢娜在應許之地》

並列摘要

This paper places Gish Jen's Mona in the Promised Land within the context of Chinese American women's fictional texts and examines the ways in which Jen playfully reinvents a Chinese American women's tradition. With an inclusion of a mother-daughter plot in the novel, Jen dutifully constructs a vertical (generational) relationship, which is one of the typical thematics of Chinese American women's writing. Yet Jen also inventively creates a horizontal community for her protagonist Mona, in which racial, class, and gender boundaries are deliberately overlooked. The dissolution of such a utopian hybrid community nevertheless questions the possibility of this kind of solidarity. Moreover, through the multiple ＂switches＂ of identity of her characters, Jen undermines the essentialist fixture of racial authenticity and the politics of insiderism. Finally, with the reconciliation between Mona and her mother and the birth of Mona's Jewish-Chinese American daughter, I argue that Jen is consciously (re-)inventing a comic tradition for Chinese American women's writing through which she may at once acknowledge the importance of matrilineage and introduce a politics of relationality that goes beyond racial confines.

並列關鍵字

Chinese American literature ； women's literary tradition ； politics of relationality ； Gish Jen ； Mona in the Promised Land

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