孙晓雪

No one can speak for you, get your own voice

孙晓雪

Author:

Sun Xiaoxue is a junior networking organizer at the German Culture Institution Goethe-Institut. Her task includes communication between the German organizations and the Chinese Partners. She holds a bachelor degree in Chinese Language and Literature of Jilin University and a Master degree in World Literature of Peking University. She had 5 years of living experience in Germany and can speak German and English. She also has basic language skills in Brazilian Portuguese and French.

Ⅰ

One charming part of Wooden Fish Songs is that there are many approaches to analyze this book. The story seems to be simple, but the contend is way much more complicated. The voices of the three women's implied a duet of three cultures, singing of similarities and differences, and they were waiting someone to find a way to compile them into one whole song someday.

1. A brief y synopsis

"Wooden Fish Songs" were the laments sung by Chinese women left behind by husbands, sons, and brothers who, in the nineteenth century, sailed to America in quest of the good life - and found instead years of indentured servitude and racial discrimination. What is interesting is that McCunn did not use the first-person narrative. Instead she decided to tell the whole story through three women's perspective. What's even more interesting is that these three women come from different culture. A Chinese mother, Sum Jui, who is the born mother of Lue, our main character, an American old lady, Fanny, who was the Christian mother of Lue who secretly felt in love with him, and an African servant, Sheba, who is a friend of Lue.

The novel focused on different points of view to Lue's live through different people. Lue has changed after he went to "The Golden Mountain", which means the West, but the thought of his family and the tradition in his hometown was in a condition of stillness. So dislocation was placed between his ideology and his family's. Besides that tragedy of losing the family, he could not change his skin color, so he would be always a stranger to the Western people, no matter what inside him the soul was. He was out of place, like a hungry ghost, nowhere to go. It made me remember Obama's uneasy status when he came back to Kenya. He said in his Dreams From My Father that his situation was like: "A Westerner not entirely at home in the West, an African on his way to a land full of strangers." (Barack 301)

2. Habermas' Theory of Communication

Habermas thinks that the conflict is rooted in the late capitalist cultural system of society by suppressing the desire of human nature and caused distrust between people. These contradictions are no longer present in the form of conf ict, but it limits the control of the interaction between people, resulting in lack of understanding between the main bodies. Dialogues between the main bodies have changed into a dispute, each side exchanges for their ideas and justify actions. Habermas views that such exchanges between the behaviors is unreasonable and distorted. Habermas asked exchanges of communications to be reasonable, not intervened by national, economical systems or administrative systems, so that contacts could live in a beautiful world.

In Habermas' opinion, the solution to solve the crisis in the late capitalist society is through dialogue contacts with the consensus values obtained by a reasonable understanding of the views of the same truth; through the mutual understanding between members, in that way to achieve social harmony and peace. This is his "new rationality" view, which the utopia sense is very obvious.

Habermas put his attention to the role of language to reveal the meaning of the life of the Aesthetics. How did Wooded Fish Songs show the dialogue between different cultures? That would be discussed in the next chapter.

Ⅱ

1. Sum Jui— mother who has lost her son

Sum Jui was a superstitious woman. In ancient China, even today, many people still believe in supernatural powers. At the beginning of the book, Sum Jui told us that she was marked by a ghost. The secret was well kept, so it came out that Sum Jui was married to Lue's father and gave birth to Lue. But life was not easy. Because of the evil brother and sisterin-law, their live was always under pressure. But Sum Jui never made it to fight and protect herself. Inside she blamed herself for the bad luck of their family and their offspring's fate. As the economic condition went too bad for them, her young son Gim Gong decided to go to the "Golden Mountain" to earn some gold eagles to help his family. In Sum Jui's eyes he was still a boy then. He was curious, brilliant and he was kind. But that was all she has got from him. After his son's departure she did not know that this journey would kill the spirit of her Chinese young boy who she would lose forever.

It was not until Gim Gong came back that she realized the fact that she could not communicate with him anymore. She loved her son but she can't stand changes in her son's live. For her, there was a biased perspective that all old Chinese tradition is good and the foreign things are aliens. She was sure that her son was fouled by some foreign ghosts. She came out with the idea that if he could get married then he would change and the foreign ghost would leave. But Liu escaped and never came back.

2. Fanny—The creator of a new man

Miss Fanny was like a newborn mother to Lue. She is Christian and her love should belong to God. But somehow she began to develop feelings for Lue which was not only forbidden by the society but also even disguised by her.

How Lue viewed this relationship is much simpler. He was thankful that Fanny taught him knowledge and treated him kind, and his heart was fulf lled with grace. First he viewed her as a teacher, then as a friend, and at last he called her" Mother Fanny". This was ironic in two ways. First, if we consider Fanny's sexual attraction to him, we would f nd it ironic because this kind of name would imply their relationship as mother and son but not as man and woman which Fanny was longing for. Second, viewing Fanny as his second mother would mean that he has abandoned his identity of a Chinese son. In fact it was really a long time since he told his family that he was alive. During his long absence his family members died of starvation but he did not send back any money. Maybe in his heart deep down, he did not view them as family any more. Fanny, who could help him and understand him, was family.

We don't know if Lue knew about the real feeling of Miss Fanny for him. This is hard because his lack of voice. His relationship with Miss Fanny is something like God and human. God creates people and believers worship him for good. Fanny creates a new Lue, and civilized him in her ways. In her eyes he was gentle and brilliant, while in his born mother's eyes the new Lue was out of his mind. Lue was obedient to her no matter right or wrong. He had a friendly heart but when Fanny urged him to keep balance and distance between his friendship with Sheba and Jim, he listened to her. In his former mind there was nothing wrong to lit incense and honor the ancestors ,it's just like the Christians put f owers on the grave of family members who passed away. But through Fanny's effort he has abandon the whole Chinese tradition and became a prayerful Christian. This turned out that he has lost his own voice. He has not his steady position any more. Though he was westernized he was never accepted by the Western society. He gains rejection from his hometown people either, and in losing his voice he loses his position in the world. He is lonely which echoes perfectly with the title "wooden f sh songs".

3. Sheba—A truly friend

Sheba was born in a slave memory, the bottom class in the society. Afraid of being impossible to provide her yonguns a good live, she kept fighting with her will to be a mother. In her eyes the connection between Fanny and Liu was some kind of master and pet dog's relationship. But she always viewed Lue as a friend and she liked it that he always respected the idea of hers and Jim's.

Sheba was friendly to Lue. Her reason was very simple, that was because Lue was always friendly to them. He never viewed them as slaves or servants but as individuals who have their own pride. So when Lue was fallen love in La Gatte, Sheba and Jim tried to persuade it out of his mind. But he was too naive and ended up heart -broken. After Lue's success it was Sheba who cool-headed pointed out that though his brilliant and kindness, people still reject him.

According to Sheba, Fanny was like a queen and kept Liu as a prisoner. But that was kind of overreacted since she did not know the hidden love Fanny had for Liu. She once hoped that Fanny was a kind woman and did not have the problem with racial discrimination, and in that way she could raise a baby under her protection. But it was not long till she found out that that was impossible:

It was not until the end of the book when Sheba realized the best way to solve the problem.

I tell you, the faces turned up at us for stories are like the roses on that bush Lue done made. They are a mess of colors, their skins soft as petals and smelling as sweet. Looking at them, a new dream comes to me: a dream of better. Not with plants, but with people. Yes.（ Ruthanne Lum McCunn，2007： 308）

In her eyes it is the mixing of different ideas that leads to Liu's final success with the orange experiment. So if we mix the dreams of different people together, in that way, we could make up the best stories of history. This was actually the voice of the author and his theme of this book.

Ⅲ

Despite of the gender, it is obvious that the three women did have something in common. They all felt afraid of their destiny, they believe in supernatural powers and have strong wills, and all of them were at the bottom class of their society. They all wanted to protect Lue in their own way but none of them could provide Lue what he really wanted. None of them could speak for him.

Lue was some kind of Aristotle's hero. His tragedy was not all his fault but he had faults. He was not too good neither too bad. He suffered multiple rejections and he was not acknowledged in death any more than in live. That made the readers pity him .Then a mood called Catharsis would help the people to purify them and to think about their own situation.

Back to reality, we always observe people and culture through our own perspective. This is something we can't change, but what we do can change is that while observing we can take a pause before getting our conclusions. We can try to change our positions and see through different angles. Then maybe we get various ideas. There maybe is only one perfect answer for mathematic problems but when it comes to cross culture there can be many solutions, each one has the sufficient reason to get our attention as the other.

Nowadays with the world is becoming smaller and smaller, cross cultural is impossible to avoid. We use foreign technology and services in our everyday life, we speak a world language to communicate with each other, neither of us is in our "pure" environment any more. We are exposure to various new things. So how do we handle it? Of course we are more civilized than the village people in Lue's hometown so it is impossible for us to avoid and abuse everything that seems unfamiliar. But I do not agree to pursue for one thing completely and fully abandon the other. We have to get our own voices. We have to make choices between right and wrong. We should analyze the ideas no matter if it is an ancient Chinese idea or comes from the west. We should earn the good old traditions and values which still functioned in today's world and discard the corrupted ideas. We must create our own voice! In this way, we must study in a cross cultural environment, only in that way we can mix the dreams together into one big colorful dream of the whole union. English poet Robert Burns once said that we must review ourselves through the eyes of others. That really makes sense today. If we use Habermas' Theory of Communication and exchange our roles and try to look at things in an objective way instead of subjective, then maybe we could understand each other much better.

Ⅳ

There is an old Chinese saying, goes with: "You do not know the true colors of the mountain, only because you are within the mountain" .In Wooden Fish Songs nobody could understand the other because they did never get off their own cultural circles and think for others. That was the reason of the tragedy.

Habermas suggested that we should change our roles and examine ourselves through the eyes of others. That is a good suggestion. In doing that we should not forget our own voices, only if we are individuals, we could gain respect.

How to get a voice of one's own is a very difficult matter. I believe that we can solve this problem through literature as its main functions includes to reflect the world, imitate the world so that people understand the world. Literary works could express the author's feelings, cause the reader's attention and play a role in emotional catharsis. Viewed in a social function, good works can also educate the readers and improve their quality. If we could arouse more people to pay attention to the culture problem, then maybe we could make great progress in communicating, not only in literature, but in politic, economic and social areas.

【Works Cited】

Barack, Obama. Dreams from My Father. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004.

Cheung, King-Kok. An Interethnic Companion to Asian American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1997.

Ruthanne Lum McCunn. Wooden Fish Songs. Seattle: University of Washington Press ,2007.

Ruthanne Lum McCunn. Chinese American Portraits: Personal Histories, 1828-1988. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1988.

乐黛云：《跨文化之桥》，北京大学出版社2002年版。

朱立元：《当代西方文艺理论》，华东师范大学出版社1997年版。

（没有人可以为你发声，你需要自己拥有话语权）

19世纪中国第一批移民踏上美国的土地去寻找新的生活。这些第一代移民在他乡经历了许多生活上的艰难和文化习俗上的挑战，他们在备受歧视之余还要忍受与家人分离的痛苦。他们的妻女母亲被留在国内守望等候，唱着“木鱼之歌”。

在中国，木鱼是寺庙中的僧人所使用的乐器。它是对于神灵忠诚的象征，也意味着孤独的一生。僧人要遵守四戒，不能像普通人一样饮食，不许完婚。他们的生命中充斥着隐忍，将有限的一生奉献给无限的宗教事业。在某种程度上，本书的标题“木鱼之歌”象征着主人公刘的一生。他的生活在东西双重文化的撞击下找不到自己的位置，处于在双边文化中都丧失话语权的失语状态。

这本小说别出心裁之处在于主人公从始至终没有发声，暗示着他在身份识别上的困惑。全书共分为三章，以三个不同年龄，不同种族，不同文化背景下的女人的视角勾画出男主人公的生命轨迹，形成鲜明对立的不同观点，给读者提供了不同文化背景下的不同认知视角。本文作者试图通过分析小说中三足鼎立的观点来寻求一条借文学之力的跨文化之间的沟通途径。

失语 跨文化沟通 身份认知孙晓雪目前工作于北京德国文化中心·歌德学院。她的工作领域包括德中双方文化活动的沟通与联络。她本科毕业于吉林大学汉语言文学系，之后就读于北京大学外国语学院比较文学与世界文学研究所，拥有硕士学位。孙晓雪早期在德国生活过5年，会说德语、英语、初级的巴西葡语和法语。"Wooden Fish Songs" were the laments sung by Chinese women left behind by husbands, sons, and brothers who, in the nineteenth century, sailed to America in quest of the good life - and found instead years of indentured servitude and racial discrimination.

In China, wooden f sh is a kind of instrument used in temples by the monks and nuns. It is a symbol for showing pietas to the gods in Buddhism and implies a lifetime long of loneliness. They cannot drink or eat as normal people and they are not allowed to get married. It is all about abstinence. They have to contribute their limited life to the unlimited religion cause.

In a rhetorical way, "Wooden Fish Songs "signif es the life of Lue, who is the main character in Wooden Fish Song. His life was out of place. He was abandoned from both sides—his born family and adopted family. He has lost his voice.

One of the creative points in this novel is that it observed a man through three women's view. The man had no voice. As it is said in the foreword by Anna Deveare Smith:"Who has the right to speak for whom?" According to their different culture, they've got extremely different religions and values. They live in different worlds which are built with different value systems. This essay is trying to reveal these three women's mental idea toward Liu Gim Gong in order to analyze the factors which affected their different opinion. In order to analyze the book, this essay is divided into three parts. The f rst part would give a brief y introduction of this book and Habermas' Theory of Communication. The second part would analyze the psychological activity of the three female characters. It will discuss about their opinion toward Liu and why it was like that. It will try to analyze the different background of each woman and seek for a common ground. The third part would discuss about culture problems in reality and seek a way to solve it through literature.

wooden Fish song Habermas' theory of communication loss of voice