Quest for Identity in Jean Paul Sartre’s Words and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior | ||
| مجلة البحث العلمي في الآداب | ||
| Article 28, Volume 20, العدد العشرون الجزء التاسع - Serial Number 9, December 2019, Pages 180-206 PDF (414.33 K) | ||
| Document Type: المقالة الأصلية | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/jssa.2019.75639 | ||
| Author | ||
| Neveen Samir Mohammad Ahmad* | ||
| Lecturer of English Literature Modern Academy for Engineering and Technology | ||
| Abstract | ||
| The task of this paper is not merely a discussion of the comparative study of Sartre’s Words and Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. The paper also attempts to examine how the implied author dealt with migration, gender, growth, and the Chinese-American identity in a neo-narration; it illustrates the complexities of twentieth century autobiography. That is the fact that the chronological narrative of traditional writing is ignored. As will be illustrated, the intersection of history and literature in addition to the experiences of the protagonists in the diaspora who struggle with character development and identity in different societies not only reflects the implied norms of the respective work (and thus the implied author’s), but also makes it possible to draw conclusions about the implied author’s (and even the epoch’s) general approach to the world. The mirroring technique highlights the theme of appearance versus reality. Their protagonists suffer from destabilized identity as a result of the clash between how they seem and how they see themselves, how they are labelled and how they really are. In this paper, I shall explore a number of stages during the protagonists’ search for self according to the different phases of their language experience. My discussion will follow the thread from the point of departure of the quest to the process of self-identification and conclude with the completion of the quest. Beside this main concern, I will also talk about other issues, namely that of filial, social and cultural forces that together form the textuality of selfhood. | ||
| References | ||
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Primary Sources: Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. 2010. Vintage Books, 1975. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Words. 2000.Translated by Irene Clephane, Penguin Books, 1964. Secondary Sources: Demetrakopoulos, Stephanie A." The Metaphysics of Matrl1inearism", Women’s Autobiography, edited by Estelle C. Jelinek - Indiana University Press, 1980. Eakin, John Paul. Fictions in Autobiography; Studies in the Art of Self-Invention. Princeton University Press,1985. Gold, Herbert. “Saint Sartre: The Spaces Between the Words." The Hudson Review, Vol. XVII, no.4, winter 1964-65, pp.581-586. Jay. Paul. Being in the Text: Self-Representation from Wordsworth to Roland Barthes Cornell University Press,1984. Jelinsk, Estelle C. ed. Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism. Indiana University Press, 2017. ---. The Tradition of Women's Autobiography from Antiquity to the Present. Twayne,1986. Juhasz, Suzanne. "Maxine Hong Kingston/Narrative Technique & Female Identity.” Contemporary American Women Writer: Narrative Strategies, edited by Catherine Rainwater & William J. Scheick, The University Press of Kentucky, 1985,pp.173 - 189. Kazin, Alfred. "The Self as History.” Contemporaries: From The 19th century to the Present. Horizon Press, 1952. Kim, Elaine H. “Asian American Writers: A Bibliographical Review," American Studies International, Vol. XXII, no.2, 2 Oct. 1984, pp.41-78. Langbaum, Robert. The Mystery of Identity. Oxford University Press, 1977. Murray, David. "Authenticity and Test in American-Indian, Hispanic and Asian Autobiography." First Person Singular: Studies in American Autobiography, edit | ||
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