Re-thinking Female Subjectivity through Magic Realism

-.In her novel The Hundred Secret Senses , Amy Tan takes distance from 1990 America and China while travelling back and forth to 1860 Changmian. She revisits the Taiping rebellion, re-affirms the Hakka identity and re-thinks-female Hakkanese subjectivity. She ̳invents‘ and makes use of ̳the world of yin‘ that allows her to travel across continents, temporal spaces as well as life and death. Consequently the novel is a magical realist text. There are magic realist elements as in the case of ̳the world of Yin‘ which is the world of the dead; while reality is demonstrated in the Taiping rebellion (...). The common ground between the two worlds is that the narrator conveys the truth about the Manchu‘s oppression of the Hakka‘s minority on one hand and she further asserts the female subjectivity of the Hakkanese. Therefore the purpose of this article is to reveal the techniques used by Amy Tan to parallel lives of three characters (Chinese and Chinese Americans) with other three incarnated characters from 1860 China; through the use of magic realism and reincarnation. She aims to restore balance and assert one‘s identity (with focus on female subjects). In her reference to a specific historical context, Tan recognizes the oppression the Hakkanese (fe/male) were subject to and clings to their origins. She transgresses temporal and special boundaries through magic realism and re-rights their position and values. Although magic realism is not a prominent characteristic of Asian American literature, it is widely used by Chinese-American novelist Amy Tan in her third novel The Hundred Secret Senses. In this novel, Amy Tan exposes two sisters‘ narration of their respective lives; the Chinese-born Kwan Li and the American-born Olivia Yee being half-sisters. The novel is concerned with the journey of the American-born Olivia toward identity formation and psychic balance. It describes how the parallels between her life and the life of the American missionary Miss Banner help her find that balance. Olivia traces her experiences in two settings: in San Francisco and Changmian. Living with Simon Bishop—her husband for seventeen years—she is torn by grief, despair and fears. She asserts that ―I felt stuck in the bottom of a wishing well. I was desperate to shout what I wanted, but I didn‘t know what that was. I know only what it wasn‘t‖ (128). Olivia suffers from psychic traumas with the death of her father, living her childhood and adolescent years with her Chinese sister who brought her up with her ̳yin stories‘ as she possesses ̳yin eyes‘ ̳yin voice‘ and she lives with those who died in ̳the world of yin‘ Therefore the real and fictional fuse with the magic realist to reconstruct suppressed cultures, identities of the Chinese and Chinese-American as well as the Hakka minority. Furthermore Amy Tan uses magical realism and the concept of reincarnation to articulate the silenced voices and historical traces of a Chinese minority group: the Hakka. Through inscribing the past, the 1850‘s to the 1860‘s into the present, the novelist challenges the erasure of the Hakka identity and the achievement of the Taiping Rebellion. Moreover, the use of magic realism unearths the historical atrocities and horrors experienced by the Hakka. Thus Kwan‘s ―yin stories and voice‖ will guide Olivia through her journey of self-affirmation and will help her find balance with herself, her husband and the environment. Kwan—the Chinese half-sister—helps the American-born Olivia to recover her balance by convincing her to visit China and precisely her ancestral homeland Changmian where she—Olivia—lived 18 years. She convinces Olivia that ―you and Simon love China, guarantee one hundred percent, specially my village. Changmian so beautiful you can‘t believe. Mountain, water, sky, like heaven and earth come together. I have things I leave there, always want to give you‖ (155). As a half-Chinese, Olivia is raised—unwillingly—listening to Kwan‘s ―yin stories‖ about China, the Hakka and the Taiping Rebellion. Her difficulty is resisting Kwan‘s stories and recognizing that she is the reincarnated Miss Banner. Therefore one function of Kwan‘s ―yin stories‖ and storytelling is that it lets Olivia ―realize that individual experience is not isolated but is part of a coherent and timeless whole, providing [her] with a means of personal empowerment and giving shape and direction to [her] li [fe] (100 Paula Gunn Allen). Consequently, I will start with probingthe nature of the sisterly bond and examining the role of Kwan‘s secret senses in helping Olivia find balance. For this, Amy Tan blurs the boundaries between fact/fiction and magic on one hand and natural/supernaturalon the other hand. The novel, a magic realist text, uses the Hindu Re-thinking Female Subjectivity through Magic Realism DOI: 10.9790/0837-2206053139 www.iosrjournals.org 32 | Page concept of reincarnation to fusethe Taiping Rebellion and the Hakka identity with 1995 San Francisco and the Chinese American experience. As early as the first chapter ―The Girl with Yin Eyes,‖ 1 we discover that Kwan is gifted with ―yin eyes‖. Olivia narrates that ―[m]y sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes. She sees those who have died and now dwell in the world of yin.‖ (3) Consequently, Kwan will guide Olivia‘s destiny with her ―yin eyes,‖ ―yin voice‖ and ―yin stories‖. As she immigrated to America—at her dying father‘s will—when her sister was six years old, so she will import Chinese values and culture to her beloved half-sister and she will prove to be ever faithful and loyal to her, acting as a mother to the American-born Olivia. Kwan instructs Olivia about the dynamics of family relationships in China. She maintains that ―Chinese family very close, friends very loyal. You have Chinese friends or family one lifetime, stay with you, ten thousand lifetime, good deal‖ (100). However, the latter despises her and resists her Chineseness. Seen in this light, the relationship between Kwan and Olivia is just like all the previous tense relationships between Tan‘s mothers and daughters 2 . Moreover, the same differences that separate the Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters influence the relationship between the Chinese Kwan and the American Olivia in terms of linguistic and cultural barriers. Indeed Olivia states that after living thirty years in America ―[t]ime did nothing to either Americanize her or bring out her resemblance to our father‖ (20). Like all Tan‘s mothers, Kwan does not assimilate into the American society or culture. She lives in Chinatown, speaks a combination of Chinese-English, and dresses like all immigrants. Kwan is characterized to possess unusual abilities and supernatural qualities. Her halfsistersummarizes them in this way The weirdest of her abilities, I think, has to do with diagnosing ailments. She can tell when she shakes hands with strangers whether they‘ve ever suffered a broken bone, even if it healed many years before. She knows in an instant whether a person has arthritis, tendinitis, bursitis, sciatica—she‘s really good with all the musculoskeletal stuff—maladies that she calls ̳burning bones,‘ ̳fever arms,‘ ̳sour joints,‘ ̳snaky leg‘‖ (18) In addition to diagnosing illness, she cures them. Tan characterizes Kwan in such away that she‘s different, strange and even endowed with supernatural qualities, traits that are unusual even by Chinese standards. She has magical powers. Furthermore, Kwan possesses secret senses that she defines as ―not really secret. We just call secret because everyone has, only forgotten. Some kind of sense (...) How can I say? Memory, seeing, hearing, feeling, all come together, then you know something true in your heart, like one sense‖ (102).Accordingly, in her narrative, Kwan will use these secret senses and interweave the present with the past, the real with magic and fact with fiction. At the center of Kwan‘s tales about ―yin people,‖ she relates the story of ―‖a woman named Banner, a man named Case, a one eyed girl, a half-and-half man‖; Olivia adds that ―she made it seem as if all these ghosts were our friends‖ (28). Indeed Kwan‘s narrative about ―yin people‖ is not ghost stories about the afterlife or the supernatural world; they become an integral component of the plot with specific dates, places and historical events. Consequently, The Hundred Secret Senses lends itself particularly well to an analysis informed by magic realism. In the novel, there are both a factual and magical plot, setting and characterization. The Hundred Secret Senses relies not only on history. It uses magical realism and the concept of reincarnation to articulate her silenced voices and historical traces of a Chinese minority group: the Hakka. Through inscribing the past, the 1850‘s to the 1860‘s into the present, the novelist challenges the erasure of the Hakka identity and the achievement of the Taiping Rebellion. Moreover, the use of magic realism highlights the historical atrocities and horrors experienced by the Hakka. Throughout the novel, the stories of Kwan and Olivia are intertwined just like the 1850 stories about Nunumu and Miss Banner. And what is worth mentioning is that in the novel there are two narratives which encompass a story told by Kwan (about the Taiping Rebellion) and reported by her American half-sister. Thus, Tan creates a time-spacecontinuum from Changmian in the 1850‘s to San Francisco in 1995, fusing two voices and two histories. She makes a smooth uninterrupted transition from the past to the present, from fact/fiction to magic. In chapter two ―Fisher of Men,‖ narrated by Olivia, the Taiping Rebellion, the Hakka and the other characters are set forth Kwan asserts that ―[o]f course, I can‘t say exactly how long ago this happened. Time is not the same between one life time and the next. But I think it was during the year 1864.‖ (32) Thereafter, Amy Tan inserts magical realism by making Kwan the reincarnation of Nunumu 3 . « yin »