(1) After writing her first novel, The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston realized that the American reading public was generally ignorant about Chinese Americans, so she deliberately put history lessons into her second novel, China Men—even listing historical facts, such as items of anti-Chinese legislation.
(2) Kingston contends that she felt compelled to do this, even at the risk of spoiling the dramatic moments in the narration, because sacrificing historical background for the sake of story in The Woman Warrior had not worked.
The “reviews of my first book made it clear that people did not know the history—or they thought I did not know it,” she says.
“While I was writing China Men, I could not take that tension any more. So all of a sudden, right in the middle of the story, plunk—there is an eight-page section of pure history. There are no characters in it. It really affects the shape of the book and might look quite clumsy.”
(3) The challenge that Kingston and other Asian American writers face is how to preserve the artistic integrity of their writing and be understood at the same time by readers whose ignorance of the cultural and historical background might necessitate explanations that interfere with the art.
Pertanyaan
1. The passage suggests that Kingston thought her approach to writing China Men might…
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A. Distort historical facts
B. Make the novel seem outdated
C. Appear pretentious
D. Make the novel seem awkward