英文摘要 |
This paper examines how the Eurasian writer Han Suyin, being born and raised in wartime China, explores her own trauma and identity. One important theme of Han's biographies lies in the quest of selfhood, and she begins the journey from The Crippled Tree. Setting her story against the backdrop of turbulence and violence, the author makes the issue of identity even more problematic. Han writes about the Western and Japanese exploitation of China, which she compares to the colonized Africa and Latin America. In fact, the condition of China then was even worse than a colony since it was divided among several foreign forces - The “guerilla tactics of finance” of the colonial powers brought the ruin of the economic base of China, including the business owned by the protagonist's family (125). In this biography, the Western invasion has turned the Chinese people against the heroine's Belgian mother, an exile who gave up her original nationality after marriage and was then unable to return to Europe; even though she married into a Chinese family and gave birth to eight mixed race children, she never felt a sense of belonging in China, where the native people regarded her as an alien and an enemy. The Western colonialism in China victimized the Chinese people, Europeans who married them, and also Eurasians of Chinese blood. Mainly because of her biracial background, the protagonist Rosalie develops compassion for “a host of Others,” such as mistreated animals and Chinese beggars, who are the objects of distaste. As a Eurasian, she was forced to confront the conflicts resulting from her doubleness. However, instead of being knocked down by her inner struggles, she endeavoured to find her meaning of existence. The once split and fragmented narrator avoided the “crippled” state by embracing her dual racial heritages and transforming the attacks into her own pride. Thinking from both Western and Eastern standpoints, the author has proved the privilege of being a mixed race child; traversing racial boundaries and moving about around the world, Han Suyin has manifested her status as a real international writer. |