Re-reading Immigrant Chinese Self-narratives in English (1980s to 1990s): A West–East Perspective of Philosophy and Literature

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay addresses the question of why the immigrant Chinese self-narratives published in English during the 1980s and 1990s set against China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) have achieved extraordinary commercial success and unabated popularity in the West. Reading them against the conventions of the Western self and the Chinese self, this essay argues that manipulation of the self by the retrieval of favourable sources from both Western and Chinese cultural and autobiographical legacies has improved their accessibility in the Western locality of their publication and achieved their lasting popularity. It reflects the unequal and uneven forces of Chinese and Western economic, political, and cultural representations in that particular historical moment.