This study traces the textual construction of identity in the female Bildungsroman of Toni Morrison and Maxine Hong Kingston. Deploying the «politics of rememory» in their textual representation of female development, Morrison and Kingston unearth the multiple layers of repressed memories, including personal stories, specific cultural history, and racial experience of African- and Asian-American women. This book analyzes the working through of repressed memories in Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Sula, and Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior and China Men. The gap between Bildung and anti-Bildung in these texts highlights the multiple oppression faced by women of color and interrogates the established standards and value system of the hegemonic culture.
«Dr. Feng's book adapts the traditionally male genre of the Bildungsroman to the work of two of the foremost women writers in the U.S. today. In offering psychologically astute and illuminating readings of important texts by Maxine Hong Kingston and Toni Morrison, Feng initiates a valuable cross-cultural dialogue.» (Amy Ling, Director, Asian American Studies Program Professor, Department of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison)