"American eyes": Ancestor worship and the place of the traditional in Asian-American literature.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Ancestor worship was the most powerful way in which Chinese immigrants negotiated their allegiances to the mother land. Though it is commonly understood in terms of its most spectacular image—the domestic altarpiece—ancestor worship also structured the daily life of immigrants. One could not buy a hand laundry, remit money, or settle a dispute without making recourse to the Family Associations that developed primarily as institutions to facilitate the repatriation of immigrant bones. Chinese American fiction cannot be understood fully without attention to the very machinery that structured social experience.
My dissertation explores how contemporary Asian American writers transform ancestral worship to articulate a distinctive identity. At the center of this transformation is a double movement—a celebration and an ironic repudiation of traditional practice. Contemporary writers have complicated a formulation that the early Chinese America writers inaugurated; they look at ancestor worship with what Pardee Lowe terms “American eyes”, neither wholly rejecting nor completely embracing it. Their reengagement with ancestor worship involves a re-vision of the practice that speaks to the historical and social conditions peculiar to their experiences in America.
I have chosen to write about ancestor worship in order to wedge myself into a larger critical debate about the place of traditional culture within the discipline of Asian American Studies. Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong has argued that an engagement with traditional culture threatens the strategic distinction between Asian American Studies and East Asian Studies—a distinction that has allowed Asian American to become a part of the American mosaic. I have arranged my chapters to show how ancestor worship has changed along a series of different axes—gender, ethnicity, and sexuality. My dissertation demonstrates how three writers are able to re-view and reengage some of the most traditional practices through their “American eyes.&rdquo.