Rewriting of American History: Maxine Hong Kingston's 'China Men'
Following the success of The Woman Warrior (1976) which tells the stories of her female predecessors, Chinese American writer Maxine Hong Kingston’s second memoir, China Men (1980), is a saga of the author's family history and pays tribute to her male ancestors who are the early Chinese immigrants in America. It illustrates the obstacles these Chinese men have surmounted, the mental battle they have engaged in, and the journey they have gone through as sojourners, labourers, and finally legal citizens of the Gold Mountain.
Initiated by the father’s silence and the mother’s ‘talk-stories’ about the men in the family, Kingston reconstructs a mythic family history as she gives voice to her immigrant ancestors, who are obliterated from the family history or official record. Through an intertwining of fantasy, myth, stories, history, and memories, Kingston imaginatively weaves her family history as part of the American history, hence mythically rewriting it as she credits the early Chinese immigrants’ contribution in the establishment of America.