Quest for identity in Jean Paul sartre's words and maxine hong kingston's the woman warrior

Abstract EN

The task of this paper is not merely a discussion of the comparative study of Sartre‟s Words and Kingston‟s The Woman Warrior.

The paper also attempts to examine how the implied author dealt with migration, gender, growth, and the Chinese-American identity in a neo-narration; it illustrates the complexities of twentieth century autobiography.

That is the fact that the chronological narrative of traditional writing is ignored.

As will be illustrated, the intersection of history and literature in addition to the experiences of the protagonists in the diaspora who struggle with character development and identity in different societies not only reflects the implied norms of the respective work (and thus the implied author‟s), but also makes it possible to draw conclusions about the implied author‟s (and even the epoch‟s) general approach to the world.

The mirroring technique highlights the theme of appearance versus reality.

Their protagonists suffer from destabilized identity as a result of the clash between how they seem and how they see themselves, how they are labelled and how they really are.

In this paper, I shall explore a number of stages during the protagonists‟ search for self according to the different phases of their language experience.

My discussion will follow the thread from the point of departure of the quest to the process of self-identification and conclude with the completion of the quest.

Beside this main concern, I will also talk about other issues, namely that of filial, social and cultural forces that together form the textuality of selfhood.