Constructing contemporary ethnic American identities by reconceptualizing ancient narratives.

Abstract

For many ethnic Americans, forming a cultural identity is a complicated and arduous endeavor. Entrenched in an environment in which mainstream ideologies leave ethnic practices and histories vulnerable to marginalization, accessing a clear picture of cultural origin is nearly impossible for groups that have undergone significant acculturation. As cultures clash, individuals find themselves suspended in a disorienting network of oppositional value systems. People positioned within this disorienting space often seek a firm cultural grounding. Barraged by a number of expectations from both their ethnic and the mainstream culture, minorities often experience a deep sense of displacement. Seeking to recover cultural roots in an effort to make sense of hybridized, ethnic identity becomes a negotiation process that many writers have recounted through autobiography. Zora Neale Hurston's Research, Leslie Marmon Silko's Yellow Woman, and Maxine Hong Kingston's White Tigers each conveys its author's process of drafting her own cultural orientation. Disenfranchised by their culturally hybridized communities, Hurston, an African American, Silko, an American Indian, and Kingston, a Chinese American, each uses the narrative process to reshape and re-envision her ethnic history. By modernizing, revising, and adopting ancient subjectivities, each writer positions herself within an ancient narrative framework. This novel recombination of historical myth, narrative, and performance empowers these women writers to construct their own cultural representations in a tenuous social climate.