程金城

新时期以来，随着对外开放的不断扩大和深入，特别是与国外文化交流的日益广泛，以及当代中国文学研究范围的拓展，对海外华文文学的研究方兴未艾，成果不小。但是，对华族英文小说的研究则不多见，而把华族英文小说与华文小说进行比较研究，进而从族裔文化重建与文化策略的视角做出论证阐释，则无疑是一种学术创新和研究领域的延伸。正是从这个角度说，王彦彦博士的这本专著有其独特的学术价值和贡献。

王彦彦这本书的基础是她已完成的国家社科基金项目。当初立项的时候，国内学界对华族英文小说创作情况的研究还很有限，特别是将华族英文写作与汉语写作进行比较研究更有相当的难度。如何区分出族裔文学中的华文写作与英文写作的差异，并对其中的原因做出有深度的科学的阐释，是本命题的研究能否获得学术价值和理论意义的关键。几年过去了，今天摆在我们面前的这本专著，针对这些难题，结合文本分析进行探讨，层层深入，回答了诸多困惑，较系统地展示了美国华族英文小说与华文小说的差异状况及其微妙关系，解析了其中的社会历史的和文化的因素，抵达了本命题的主旨，其主要学术建树和价值我以为在于以下方面。

首先，作者注意到了海外华族文学创作的复杂性和研究角度的多维性及变易性，并从概念的厘清辨析入手，提出本研究的领域的新概念，找到了研究的新起点。作者在书中指出，当今全球移民大潮方兴未艾，中国是一个移民大国，美国亦是一个移民接收大国，全球化进程加深了移民问题的复杂程度，这些情况直接影响了移民及其后代的文学创作：一些第一代移民不再将文学语言局限于华文，而是采用英文写作，或是华文、英文的双语写作；一些华裔作家在作品里极力淡化族裔特性乃至族裔意识；此外还出现了具有华人血统的混血裔作家，他们在写作中努力展现自身华人血统传统的一面，等等。这就揭示了当代华族文学的景观与新内容，而已有的研究概念存在许多争论，显然不能够完全涵括这一复杂的文学现象。更重要的发现是，造成这些复杂现象的主要原因来自于作家们在写作意图、创作立场等问题上存在较大差异，然而在这些差异的背后却有一个共同点，即作家们具有华人血统并对这一血统带来的华人传统有所意识。由此她采用“华人”的一般释义将研究涉及的创作统称为“美国华族小说”。这不仅是概念的辨析，而且是对研究对象的重新审视和观照。

第二，从文学语言差异入手，尝试比较美国华族英文小说与华文小说的异同。作者对于美国华族文学不同语言的创作采取了比较研究的视角，突破了过往研究主要集中于单一研究领域的情况。因为作者认识到，语言是文化的载体，同时语言中包含了大量的人类潜意识、无意识，选择什么样的语言进行创作，是作家某些下意识心态的流露，同时文学语言也会极大影响到作家的创作过程和作品最后的呈现形态。基于这样的理性认识，作者认为，虽然美国华人移民与华裔同为华族，但文学语言与文化环境的差异却使他们的文学创作表现出不同的特征，其中包含的文化策略也有较大差别。从分析中可见，即使美国华族为了应对多元文化局面而开始将族群视为一个整体，在具体文化建构活动中，移民与华裔不同的文化诉求造成的力量分散仍旧是需要解决的问题。这样的结论，给人诸多启示。

第三，在分析美国华族小说的唐人街叙事时，首先厘清了唐人街文化不能简单地等同于中华文化，为了在美国社会中立足，唐人街文化必然对中华文化进行某些调整乃至变形。由此注意到作家们在叙事中都具有双重视角，即一方面他们以他者的目光观察，另一方面又作为文化内部的人进行着体验。差异在于：移民作为唐人街的外来者进行观察，同时又是中华文化的内部成员，以此体验本民族文化在异国土地上的延续和变异；华裔则首先是唐人街文化的内部成员，但他们对于深层的中华文化又有陌生感，加之他们生长的美国文化背景，中华文化不免成为某种程度上的他者。

第四，过往的研究中均注意到台港留学生文学（主要是20世纪六七十年代）与新移民文学具有可比性，但这些比较忽略了在表现中华文化时，二者在民族意识方面的差异。王彦彦在本书的研究中则有新的发现：总体而言，留学生、尤其是台湾留学生在表现中华文化时有着较强的中华民族自觉意识，故而他们将中华文化作为精神家园，在面对异质文化的冲击时通过皈依中华文化来解决问题。这与新移民文学往往着重于批判、反省国内的文化沉疴大不相同。

第五，本书揭示出，在新历史主义思潮影响下，文学中的历史叙事发生了极大变化。美国华族的小说都表现出对历史话语建构的兴趣，但在华裔和新移民的创作中，其历史话语的差异是十分明显的。美国华裔的历史关注主要集中于美国华人移民历史，通过文学叙述将曾经被主流遮蔽的历史再现出来，重新建构美国华族历史；新移民更多关注20世纪以来的中国历史，从民间立场出发建构个人历史话语。造成差异的主要原因在于二者的话语建构背景不同——华裔的历史叙事以美国历史主流叙事为参照，新移民则以个人历史话语对抗国内长期以来的宏大历史叙事。

上述这样一些见解，突破了以往研究的单一维度，其中重要原因得益于王彦彦开阔的学术视野与独立思考精神，她将华族文学中的英文写作和华文写作的文学现象置于全球化时代和美国族裔文学写作的整体背景，进行跨文化、跨语言的对比研究，同时，时时关照着文化重建和文化策略建设的主旨，并与文本的细读分析结合起来，促进了该领域的研究在多方面的进展。

移民潮的方兴未艾决定了族裔写作的变动不居、新作不断，其中可阐释和思考的问题还很多，这不是一本书所能穷尽的。彦彦对此有清醒的认识，所以本书只是在某些方面着力并有所突破，而不可能对太多的作品逐一分析，这是本书的有限，也是它的特色。重要的是她发现并阐述了华族小说中华文写作与英文写作的差异，并建立了属于自己的自成体系的研究范式，将其从文化重建与文化策略的视角做了论述，提出自己的见解。仅此这些，本书就值得赞赏和推荐。

彦彦的研究领域不限于此，博士论文也不专注于此，但是富于创新的学术勇气和稳实沉潜的学术探索，依然给读者以欣喜和诸多启示。她在生活中平实低调，人缘很好，而在学术上则能不受干扰、很有定力，颇有些特立独行的味道，这在今天难能可贵。祝愿她在学术道路上稳步前行！

2015.10.18于兰州大学

Since the new period of Cheng Jincheng, with the continuous expansion and deepening of opening up to the outside world, especially the increasingly extensive cultural exchanges with foreign countries, and the expansion of the scope of contemporary Chinese literature research, the research on overseas Chinese literature has been in the ascendant and has achieved great results. However, the study of Chinese English novels is rare, and comparing Chinese English novels with Chinese novels, and then making arguments and interpretations from the perspective of ethnic cultural reconstruction and cultural strategies, is undoubtedly an extension of academic innovation and research field. It is from this perspective that Dr. Wang Yanyan's monograph has its unique academic value and contribution. The basis of Wang's book is the National Social Science Fund project she has completed. When the project was first established, the domestic academic circles still had limited research on the creation of Chinese English novels, especially the comparative study of Chinese English writing and Chinese writing was quite difficult. How to distinguish the difference between Chinese writing and English writing in ethnic literature, and make an in-depth scientific explanation of the reasons, is the key to whether the research of this proposition can obtain academic value and theoretical significance. Several years have passed, and the monograph before us today, in view of these difficult problems, combined with text analysis to explore, layer by layer, answers many puzzles, systematically shows the difference between Chinese American English novels and Chinese novels and their subtle relationships, analyzes the social, historical and cultural factors, and reaches the main purpose of this proposition, and its main academic achievements and values I think lie in the following aspects. First of all, the author pays attention to the complexity of overseas Chinese literary creation and the multi-dimensional and changeable nature of research angles, and starts from the clarification and analysis of concepts, puts forward new concepts in the field of research, and finds a new starting point for research. The author points out in the book that today's global immigration tide is in the ascendant, China is a large immigration country, the United States is also a large immigration receiving country, and the globalization process has deepened the complexity of the immigration issue, which directly affects the literary creation of immigrants and their descendants: some first-generation immigrants no longer limit their literary language to Chinese, but write in English, or bilingual writing in Chinese and English; Some Chinese writers try to downplay ethnic identity and even ethnic consciousness in their works; In addition, there are mixed-race writers of Chinese descent who strive to show their traditional side of Chinese descent in their writing, and so on. This reveals the landscape and new content of contemporary Chinese literature, and there are many debates about existing research concepts, which obviously cannot fully cover this complex literary phenomenon. The more important finding is that the main reason for these complex phenomena comes from the large differences in writers' writing intentions, creative positions, etc., but behind these differences there is a common point, that is, writers have Chinese ancestry and are aware of the Chinese traditions brought by this bloodline. Therefore, she adopted the general definition of "Chinese" and collectively referred to the creations involved in her research as "American Chinese novels". This is not only a conceptual analysis, but also a re-examination and contemplation of the research object. Second, starting from the differences in literary language, try to compare the similarities and differences between Chinese American English novels and Chinese novels. The author adopts a comparative perspective on the creation of different languages of Chinese American literature, breaking through the previous situation that research has mainly focused on a single field of study. Because the author recognizes that language is the carrier of culture, and language contains a large number of human subconscious, unconscious, what kind of language to choose for creation is the expression of some subconscious mentality of the writer, and literary language will also greatly affect the writer's creative process and the final presentation of the work. Based on this rational understanding, the author believes that although Chinese immigrants in the United States and ethnic Chinese are both Chinese, the differences in literary language and cultural environment make their literary creations show different characteristics, and the cultural strategies contained in them are also quite different. From the analysis, it can be seen that even if the Chinese American begin to regard the ethnic group as a whole in order to cope with the multicultural situation, the dispersion of power caused by the different cultural demands of immigrants and Chinese Americans in specific cultural construction activities is still a problem that needs to be solved. Such a conclusion gives many enlightenments. Third, when analyzing the Chinatown narrative of Chinese American novels, it is first clarified that Chinatown culture cannot be simply equated with Chinese culture, and in order to gain a foothold in American society, Chinatown culture must make some adjustments and even deformations to Chinese culture. It follows that writers have a dual perspective in their narratives, that is, they observe through the eyes of others on the one hand, and experience them as people within the culture on the other. The difference is that immigrants observe as outsiders in Chinatown, and at the same time are internal members of Chinese culture, so as to experience the continuation and mutation of their own culture in foreign lands; Chinese Americans are first and foremost internal members of Chinatown culture, but they have a strange sense of deep Chinese culture, and coupled with the American cultural background in which they grew up, Chinese culture inevitably becomes something other. Fourth, past studies have noted that the literature of Taiwanese and Hong Kong students (mainly in the sixties and seventies of the 20th century) is comparable with the literature of new immigrants, but these comparisons ignore the differences in national consciousness between the two in the expression of Chinese culture. Wang Yanyan's research in this book has made new findings: in general, international students, especially Taiwanese students, have a strong sense of Chinese national consciousness when expressing Chinese culture, so they regard Chinese culture as their spiritual home, and solve problems by converting to Chinese culture in the face of the impact of heterogeneous culture. This is very different from the literature of new immigrants, which often focuses on criticism and reflection on domestic cultural problems. Fifth, the book reveals that under the influence of the new historicist trend, the historical narrative in literature has undergone great changes. Chinese American novels show an interest in the construction of historical discourse, but the difference in historical discourse is very obvious in the creation of Chinese Americans and new immigrants. The historical attention of Chinese Americans mainly focuses on the history of Chinese immigration in the United States, reproducing the history that was once obscured by the mainstream through literary narrative, and reconstructing the history of Chinese Americans. New immigrants pay more attention to Chinese history since the 20th century and construct personal historical discourse from a folk standpoint. The main reason for the difference lies in the different discursive construction backgrounds of the two - the historical narrative of Chinese Americans is based on the mainstream narrative of American history, while the new immigrants use personal historical discourse to counter the grand historical narrative of the long history in China. The above insights break through the single dimension of previous research, and an important reason is that Wang Yanyan's broad academic vision and independent thinking spirit, she places the literary phenomena of English writing and Chinese writing in Chinese literature in the era of globalization and the overall background of American ethnic literature writing, conducts cross-cultural and cross-language comparative research, and at the same time, always pays attention to the main purpose of cultural reconstruction and cultural strategy construction, and combines it with the close reading and analysis of texts to promote the progress of research in this field in many aspects. The rise of immigration has determined that ethnic writing is constantly changing, new works are constantly being written, and there are still many problems that can be explained and considered, which cannot be exhausted in one book. Hikohiko has a clear understanding of this, so this book only focuses on some aspects and makes breakthroughs, and it is impossible to analyze too many works one by one, which is the limitation of this book and its characteristics. Importantly, she discovered and elaborated on the differences between Chinese writing and English writing in Chinese novels, established her own self-contained research paradigm, discussed it from the perspective of cultural reconstruction and cultural strategy, and put forward her own insights. For this alone, this book deserves to be appreciated and recommended. Yanyan's research field is not limited to this, and his doctoral dissertation does not focus on this, but the innovative academic courage and steady and immersive academic exploration still give readers joy and many inspirations. She is plain and low-key in life, and her popularity is very good, but she can be undisturbed and determined academically, and she has a bit of a maverick taste, which is rare today. I wish her steady progress on her academic path! 2015.10.18 Lanzhou University（AI翻译）