解读《莫娜在希望之乡》中圣经原型的位移-英语语言文学专业论文.docxVIP

华北电力大学硕士学位论文 华北电力大学硕士学位论文 PAGE PAGE 10 Chapter One Introduction About the Author and the Work Gish Jen is the author of the novels Typical American, Mona in the Promised Land, The Love Wife and Who’s Irish. Her honors include the Lannan Award for Fiction and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is now living with her husband and two children in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Gish Jen was born in a Chinese family that migrated to America, so she couldn’t avoid being influenced both by the Chinese traditions and the white mainstream cultures. Her parents are still Chinese to some extent, while she is American, nothing Chinese at all. Though she never thinks herself as a banana which is yellow on the cover while white inside, there are still problems existing between Gish Jen and her parents, not only about generation gap but also the cultural differences and identification. She once explained the biggest difference between her parents and her like this: her parents were born in a culture that put the society on the top, while she was born in a culture that put the individuals first. So it requires her to find a balance point for herself. And she wants to take the responsibility of communicating the two cultures in her family. But she also admits that it is too hard to play a role in a family with two completely different cultures interweaving. When she was young, Gish Jen lived in a Jewish neighborhood in the suburb of New York City, and her family was the only Asian family there. So, she was greatly influenced by the Jewish life styles instead of the domestic circumstance. Later in her life, this period of experience gives her so many inspirations in writing. Her humor is the “standard Jewish style”. If she had not lived in this Jewish neighborhood, then she wouldn’t be what she is today. In her masterpiece, Mona in the Promised Land, Gish Jen puts herself to be the heroine Mona to express herself. At the very beginning of the n