Gish Jen’s Mona in the Promised Land: envisioning nation as a polycultural community

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper proposes to examine Gish Jen’s novel Mona in the Promised Land from polycultural/transcultural perspective. Polyculturalism dismisses the notion that individuals’ relationships to cultures are categorical and proposes that they are rather partial and plural; that cultural traditions are not independent, sui generis lineages but rather interacting systems is another assumption of the framework. Individuals are open to influences from multiple cultures and thereby become conduits through which cultures can affect each other. A polyculturalist rubric provides a better understanding of multiple cultural identities in literary works. Moreover, the concept brings into sharp focus how cultures are changed by contact with other cultures, enabling richer psychological theories of intercultural influence. Although polyculturalism and transculturalism provide an alternative framework to traditional paradigms, this is not to lose sight of the fact that they are extensions and improvements on colorblindness and multiculturalism. Multiculturalism has had its own history of reinventions from exclusionary multiculturalism to liberal multiracialism, critical multiracialism etc. that sought to supplement its limitations. The paper examines, with reference to Mona in the Promised Land, how different scientific paradigms about culture proffer different ideologies and policies and how polyculturalism or transculturalism with their policy of interculturalism provide a valuable complement to the traditional ideologies of colorblindness and multiculturalism.