Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 82
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Popular Culture Review
culture described in the connoisseurs’ manuals of Chinese jade or oolong tea, and the
stereotype of the Chinese immigrant, either withdrawn and totally Chinese, or quietly
assimilated and unobtrusively American, a model of the results o f the melting-pot
process” (10). This view is also shared by Frank Chin, Patricia Lin Blinde, and Elaine
Kim who in Asian American Literature suggests that Jade Snow Wong defines her
identity by “whatever was most exotic, interesting, and non-threatening to the white
society that was her reference point” (66).
King-Kok Cheung’s use o f the term “two-toned language” is very similar to the
Bakhtinian Dialogism. In the essay “Discourse in the Novel,” Russian critic Mikhail
Mikhailovich Bakhtin explains how “the internalized double-voiced discourse” works
in the novel: heteroglossia is ""another s speech in another’s language, serving to ex
press authorial intentions but in a refracted way.” Since such “speech constitutes a
special type of double-voiced discourse,” it “serves two speakers at the same time and
expresses simultaneously two different intentions: the direct intention of the character
who is speaking, and the refracted intention of the author” (324-25).
Annette Bening’s hosting the preview of The Joy Luck Club was reported by Associ
ated Press in September 26, 1993’s St. Paul Pioneer Press. The comments made by
Amy Tan’s mother appeared in “The Joy Luck o f Amy Tan,” Asian Pages, 10/15-31/
93: 10.
The movie version of M. Butterfly is apparently toned down to appease the audience.
In the movie version, Renee Gallimard has transformed from being a pathetic figure to
a tragic figure. David Henry Hwang has also deleted Song Liling’s severe criticism of
the West in the court such as: “The West has sort of an international rape mentality
towards the East”; the “West thinks of itself as masculine— big guns, big industry, big
money— so the East is feminine—weak, delicate, poor”; the “West believes the East,
deep down, wants to be dominated—^becau se a woman can’t think for herself’ (82-3).
As is explained by Lily in Come See the Paradise, the 1913 Alien Land Law Act
prevented Issei who were not eligible for citizenship from owning land in California.
Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. “Discourse in the Novel.” The Dialogic Imagination. Ed.
Michael Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981. 259-422.
Cheung, King-Kok. Articulate Silences. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1993.
— . “Re-viewing Asian American Literary Studies.” An Interethnic Companion to Asian
American Literature. New York: Cambridge UP, 1997. 1-36.
Chin, Frank. “Come All Ye Asian American Writers o f the Real and the Fake.” The Big
AIIIEEEEE! An Anthology o f Chinese American and Japanese American Litera
ture. Ed. Frank Chin, etal. New York: Meridian, 1991. 1-69.
Foucault, Michele. “The Subject and Power.” Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and
Hermeneutics. Eds. Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. Chicago: U o f Chicago
P, 1982. 200-50.
Hayslip, Le Ly. When Heaven and Earth Changed Places. New York: Plume, 1989.
Hagedom, Jessica. “Introduction” Charlie Chan Is Dead. New York: Penguin, 1993. xxiXXX.