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Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, 2023, 6(9); doi: 10.25236/AJHSS.2023.060909.

Unity of Opposites: Questioning the Genre of the Woman Warrior and the Protagonist’s Cultural Identity

Author(s)

Sun Binghui

Corresponding Author:
Sun Binghui
Affiliation(s)

College of International Education, Yantai Institute of Science and Technology, Yantai, China

Abstract

The unity of opposites, which Sean Sayers describes as the ‘basic principle of dialectical materialism, the philosophy of Marxism’ and the ‘fundamental basis of Marxist thought’, describes a situation in which two aspects of a thing are opposite to each other, yet dependent on each other. In this essay, I try to use this dialectical principle to explore two questions: what is the genre of Kingston’s The Woman Warrior? (Is it fiction or nonfiction?) and what is the protagonist’s cultural identity? (Is she Chinese or American?) As far as I’m concerned, the debate of the genre is a product of the specific historical period, and the answer depends on the reader’s own identity and the sociohistorical context. The opposites of “fiction” and “nonfiction”, “Chinese” and “American” can be united; and the book can be both fiction and nonfiction and the protagonist can be both Chinese and American.

Keywords

Unity of Opposites, Genre of the Woman Warrior, Cultural Identity

Cite This Paper

Sun Binghui. Unity of Opposites: Questioning the Genre of the Woman Warrior and the Protagonist’s Cultural Identity. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences (2023) Vol. 6, Issue 9: 58-64. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJHSS.2023.060909.

References

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