Searching for the American “great novel” in the bowels of writings of American authors of Asian background

Abstract

The intense interest in Sino American literature was fueled by poststructuralist theories that proclaimed the absence of a system revolving around a single center, epistemic uncertainty, skepticism about grand discourses, the plurality of the world and the pluralism of opinions regarding any phenomena, the surge of postcolonial theory that highlighted the uniqueness and “non-secondariness” of literatures created outside the Western canon, and multicultural aesthetics that assumed not the assimilation of ethnic literatures with mainstream literature, but their uniqueness and originality. Gish Jen, contemporary American writer of Chinese origin, has received literary recognition among critics of Asian American literary studies and has taken an honorable place among the literary giants of Asian American prose, such as L. Chu, M. H. Kingston, E. Tan, F. Chin, J. Okada, E. M. Eaton, D. Chang, etc.Her only collection of short stories “Who’s Irish?” (1999) brought Gish Jen the greatest recognition among American authors as a master of the short form. Thus, the story “Birthmates” (1994) from this collection was chosen by J. Updike for publication in the book “The Best American Short Stories of the Century” (2000).The author’s literary and non-literary writings have become not only a kind of reflection of the problems discussed in the literature of the era of multiculturalism and inextricably linked with the development of issues of national stereotypes, identity, racial discrimination, generation gaps, gender differentiation. Ukrainian literary discourse still bypasses the study of the work of American writers of Chinese origin. Meanwhile, according to American theorists, not burdened by stereotypical ideas about the figure of a modern American author, Gish Jen is one of the architects of new American literature.