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Title: | THE REQUIEMS OF NANJING': REPRESENTATIONS OF THE "FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST" IN CHINESE AMERICAN LITERATURE | Authors: | SHERALYN KOH JIA HUEY | Issue Date: | 13-Apr-2020 | Citation: | SHERALYN KOH JIA HUEY (2020-04-13). THE REQUIEMS OF NANJING': REPRESENTATIONS OF THE "FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST" IN CHINESE AMERICAN LITERATURE. ScholarBank@NUS Repository. | Abstract: | This thesis investigates how Chinese American authors have responded to and commemorated the Nanjing Massacre despite their geographical and temporal removal from the event. Ha Jin’s Nanjing Requiem and Yan Geling’s The Flowers of War are centrally concerned with memorializing the Nanjing Massacre in ways that expose individual stories beyond nationalistic discourse or grand narratives of history. By doing so, the authors also express their globalized vision and humanist values by highlighting how the impact of the Nanjing Massacre and the Second Sino-Japanese War transcends hatred and violent confrontation between two nations. In the first chapter, I show how Yan Geling, in her literary revisions of The Flowers of War, presents a historical and social commentary focusing on the internal violence, social recovery/empowerment and diverse historiographical perspectives that are caused by external conflict. Through its consideration of the ethical issues posed by war, it asks readers to look beyond the casualty numbers or military aggression to understand and remember the frequently overlooked ‘collateral damage’ that war brings or exposes in civilian society. In the following chapter, I analyse Ha Jin’s realist adaptation of historical facts, figures and details to illustrate how Nanjing Requiem encapsulates its author’s aim of remembering the Massacre as a significant yet senselessly violent crime and source of trauma that remained unpunished and suppressed in memory and traditional historiography until its revival in recent historical and literary texts. Overall, these literary memorials to the Nanjing Massacre allow readers to respond to the trauma across time and space, in turn encouraging them to uphold the legacy of its victims by preventing the recurrence of such atrocity. | URI: | https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/handle/10635/170775 |
Appears in Collections: | Bachelor's Theses |
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