On Discovery Essay | Critical Essay #4

On Discovery Critical Essay #4

ln the following excerpt from a longer essay, Shu mei Shih discusses the "intertext" of "On Discovery, " which concerns the exile of the Chinese from China and their emasculation in the West.

In this first intertext which begins [China Men], Kingston relates a tale about a certain Tang Ao who finds himself banished to a world where sex roles are reversed, where he is forced to become a woman. This poignant fable about Tang Ao's forced feminization in the Land of Women is taken from the Ch'ing Dynasty novel Flowers in the Mirror by Li Ju-chen (c. 1763-1830). The book is commonly read as a social and political allegory; the chapters which deal with the trips of the protagonists (Tang Ao and Lin Chih-yang) to the Land of Women present a satire on social injustice in general and the suppression of women in particular. In Li Juchen's...
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