earticle

영어

This paper focuses on Wittman's game he plays as an American Monkey King/trickster in Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book. The trickster who dwells on borders, at crossroads, and between worlds, prominently appears in Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey. Kingston, in Tripmaster Monkey, dis-rupts racial stereotypes and perceived boundaries, and embodies her vision of identity and benefits of a mixed cultural heritage by using the laughter, jokes, and outrage of the trickster. The novel's protagonist Wittman is a Berkeley beatnik and also a modern American incarnation of the Monkey King of Chinese legend. Wandering in and around San Francisco, negotiat-ing cultural borderlines, crusading against racism, Wittman interweaves Chinese mythic history and American romantic values as he works out his identity as a Chinese Americans man. As both clown and savior, Wittman the Monkey trickster gathers a new American community to participate in his play, which wages a war against racism and celebrates the community as a place of healing. Through Wittman's play and storytelling, Kingston examines contemporary cultural myths to criticize harmful stereotypes and negative representations of Chinese Americans.