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- Title
Cultural Translation and the Exorcist: A Reading of Kingston's and Tan's Ghost Stories.
- Authors
Ken-fang Lee
- Abstract
In this article the author will examine the concept of cultural translation in formulating a cultural identity for those who struggle between two cultures and/or languages, in this case, two Chinese American women writers, and how ghosts exemplify their in-between situation. In weaving the old cultural references from both Chinese and American backgrounds into their work, Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston also bring the newness and foreignness into the world. Kingston's first book, "The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts," combines her mother's stories, Chinese legends and myths, with her own childhood memories and fantasies. Kingston uses "ghosts" in two different contexts. One is the mother's ghost story in China. In this sense, "ghosts" mean the spirits, the apparition of the dead or the devils. Amy Tan's third novel, "The Hundred Secret Senses" and her next work, "The Bonesetter's Daughter," also weave mysterious ghost stories with women's life experiences. In both novels, ghosts represent the haunting past and the cultural memory of the immigrant sisters and mothers, waiting to be remembered and then exorcised.
- Subjects
KINGSTON, Maxine Hong, 1940-; TAN, Amy, 1952-; CHINESE American authors; WOMEN authors; CHINESE American women; CULTURAL identity; TRANSLATING &; interpreting; LANGUAGE &; languages; GHOST stories; GHOSTS in literature
- Publication
MELUS, 2004, Vol 29, Issue 2, p105
- ISSN
0163-755X
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.2307/4141821