Abstract:People who immigrate to the foreign countries and their children do not live in one culture, but live in the crevice of two or even more cultures. Cultural conflicts and cultural integration take place in their everyday life. The cultural differences would be reflected in the literary work of immigrants more or less. So it is a feasible way of studying cultural differences from the literary work of immigrants. This paper is going to deal with the cultural differences in female images concealed in Maxine Hong Kingston’s book The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts which is the real experience in Maxine Hong Kingston’s proceeding of growing up as a second-generation immigrant and explores the deep reasons which cause the phenomenon. And the cultural differences concealed in female images will be discussed within the framework of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory.
Key Words: Culture differences, Hofstede，immigrant, Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior
摘要:一般来说，人们都是生活在一个文化环境中的，但是有一些人的生活经历比较特殊，他们生活在两个甚至三个文化环境中，例如移民。在他们的生活中，文化冲突与文化融合发生在每时每刻。在移民的华裔作家的作品中，文化差异都是一个不可避免的主题，在他们的作品中，或多或少地都会有所反映。这篇论文选择从华裔文学中发现中西文化差异。这篇论文主要就是通过著名华裔美籍作家汤亭亭的《女勇士》中所揭示的中西文化差异在女性形象方面的差异。在《女勇士》中记述的有些事情正是汤亭亭作为移民的第二代在成长过程中的真实经历和她的体验。我将用霍夫斯泰德评估文化的框架来阐述中西文化差异在女性形象方面的差异并挖掘他的深层原因。
关键词：文化差异，霍夫斯泰德，汤亭亭，女勇士
Maxine Hong Kingston captures “the pain of an American-born child who inevitably reject the expectations and authority of her family in favor of the values of the new land.” (Greenspan 108) Linda B. Hall describes it as “remarkable in its insights into the plight of individuals pulled between two cultures” (Hall 191)
Maxine Hong Kingston was not a compete American or a complete Chinese, she is hybridization of the eastern and western culture. She can not get rid of the effect of either culture, then they have to acculturate in her mind. In a word, the book The Woman Warrior is a book describes the things Maxine Hong Kingston encountered as a first-generation Chinese immigrants in her growth and full of cultural conflict and cultural integration.
She shows us the status of Chinese American women both in China and America in her work. Kingston seems to have found a balance between two cultures at last. There must be a way to bridge the two cultures in her opinion.
Cultural differences and cross cultural communication are issues which have a lot of contents to be studied. My research paper just involves a little superficial content. In the days ahead, I will pay much attention to the social cause of the phenomenon and make further research on this topic.
