“Golden Humor” Embodied in the Discourse of Typical American

Jianxin WANG

Abstract


Gish Jen shows great talent for writing in her first novel Typical American, which can be seen as a good example of a successful manipulation of “golden humor”--- a specific kind of humor  employed by some Chinese American writers to illustrate the frustration, humor, and eternal wonder of the immigrant life. In Typical American, Gish Jen’s strategic use of “golden humor” not only inherits from or draws on the experience of the essence of “absurdity” in black humor but also transforms and improves it so that it is endowed with more optimistic spirit to exhibit the brighter, shining and golden facets of the Chinese American life.


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/n

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