This generation's Wild Swans? Counter-stereotyping self-creation in Xiaolu Guo's Once Upon a Time in the East: A Story of Growing Up

This article reads Xiaolu Guo's Once Upon a Time in the East: A Story of Growing Up (2017) as a counter-stereotyping memoir set against Jung Chang's Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (1991) through the authors' divergent narrative stances in self-creation. Although both memoirs belong to the literary genre of autobiography and narrate lives in the past, Guo, by comparing herself to the heroic Monkey King, exhibits a distinct perspective that characterizes her immigrant experience as a nomad's feminist journey into art. Guo's self-creation as a nomadic artist deterritorializes the affiliation of diasporic Chinese writing with misery literature, labelled ethnic, and reveals the complexity of contemporary Chinese culture. Thus, this counter-stereotyping memoir represents how an Anglophone Chinese writer of the post-Chang generation tends to negotiate her ethnic status and demonstrates the multiplicity of being Chinese.

Automated summary

This article examines the contrasting narrative approaches of Xiaolu Guo's "Once Upon a Time in the East" (2017) and Jung Chang's "Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China" (1991) as memoirs that challenge stereotypes. While both books belong to the genre of autobiography and discuss past lives, Guo's comparison of herself to the heroic Monkey King demonstrates a distinct perspective, framing her immigrant experience as a feminist journey into art. Guo's self-creation as a nomadic artist disrupts the association of diasporic Chinese literature with misery and highlights the complexities of contemporary Chinese culture.