| dc.description.abstract | This thesis investigates the problem of reading women's and ethnic literature by exploring three American novels written by ethnic women: Beloved (1987), by African-American novelist Toni Morrison; Love Medicine (1984), by Native American novelist Louise Erdrich; and Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989), by Chinese-American novelist Maxine Hong Kingston. All three of these accomplished women writers have won popular and critical acclaim. Morrison won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977 for Song of Solomon and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 for Beloved. She has won two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Erdrich is also winner of the national Book Critics Circle Award for Love Medicine. Kingston has won the National Book Critics Circle general nonfiction award and the American Book Award for nonfiction. Since all three novels are recent works (published within the last six years), they have received relatively little literary analysis.
By researching and exploring these three works and drawing on current ethnic and feminist criticism, I have made three important discoveries. First, I realized the impossibility of ignoring or downplaying the ethnic factors found in novels by minority women writers. Familiarity with Asian, Native American, and African legends and traditions was a must if I wanted to gain a better understanding of these works.
Next, I discovered that the feminist aspects of these novels could not be ignored as well. Some of the women in the novels exhibit conditions that Donovan says shape women's experiences and practice. They bear children, breast feed, and do domestic chores. Extreme social, political, and economic oppression of women is also evident.
However, although ethnic and feminist factors play significant roles in these three works, I discovered that the American culture reflected in these works outweighs the ethnic and gender differences, Although the writers come from three different ethnic backgrounds, they are all Americans sharing a common cultural experience. They grew up in the United States, they attended American schools and universities, they read American and English literature, and they were influenced by the same American and Western authors.
By presenting examples of ethnic and feminist aspects of which the reader of these novels should be aware, I will show that these aspects are important in better understanding these works, and by extension, other works by ethnic women writers. However, I will also show that the books' American and Western qualities are more important than their ethnic and feminist ones. | en |
