Writing the Asian American Artist: Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book.

Maxine Hong Kingston's genre crossing between autobiography, memoir, and fiction in The Woman Warrior: A Memoir of a Girlhood Among Ghosts generated a rethinking of the traditional expectations of autobiography as a "truthful" representation of a writer's life, problematized the constructed nature of identity, and brought attention to the existence of collective literary protagonists and multiple points of view, thus raising questions about the need for revision of genres that were often androcentric and Eurocentric in nature.(1) In Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book, Kingston forces a similar re-viewing of the traditional Kunstlerroman, the novel about the growth and maturation of an artist, as she tells the story of a fifth-generation native Californian Chinese-American, Wittman Ah Sing. Set in the sixties, this multi-layered, densely textured novel, with its multiplicity of interpretation and fluidity of meaning, challenges the reader into using his/her wit--to become a `wit man/woman'--in order to make sense of the seemingly rambling narrative.(2)

The traditional Kunstlerroman highlights the marginality of the artist in its portrayal of the typical image of a sensitive alienated soul at odds with a hostile world (see Beebe). More often than not, it is the artist's unique artistic and intellectual sensibility that leads to this alienation from society. However, in most Kunstlerromane by American writers of color, not only are the artists estranged from society because of that artistic sensibility, but they also suffer extreme marginalization as a result of race, gender, and/or class. Significantly, the racially, ethnically, and/or sexually marginalized artist-protagonists in these Kunstlerromane want to move from the margin to the center or to help change the existing meaning of margin and make it a site of agency and empowerment. Instead of retiring to an ivory tower or separating from society, as does the protagonist in the traditional Kunstlerroman, the artist-protagonists work toward establishing identities as artists and Americans within society, not as outsiders, but as involved members of that society. Further, American artists of color seek equal participation in the dominant American society not only for themselves but also for the entire group and use their art to help realize this communal vision. Most importantly, they want to achieve this goal without compromising their ethnic, racial, and/or gender identity(ies). While this is not an essentialized paradigm for all Kunstlerromane by American writers of color, and it is necessary to take inter-minority and intraminority differences into account, many of them show these characteristics.(3)

In his discussion of the revision or parodying of traditional forms or genres by writers, Henry Louis Gates Jr. asserts that it is an act of "rhetorical self-definition" (294). Kingston's redefinition of the traditional Kunstlerroman in Tripmaster Monkey reflects such a purpose as she subverts and resists the dominant discourse while envisioning new, non-stereotypical images of men and women, races and ethnic groups, believing that if we can "imagine" them, then we can work "toward building them and becoming them" (Kingston, "Interview" 783).

I

"His province is America. America, his province."

Armed with a wild imagination, a caustic tongue, and intense fervor, Wittman Ah Sing, the artist-protagonist of Tripmaster Monkey, is on a mission of self-definition and is out to subvert the dominant society's attempts to stereotype him and his ethnic community. It is not, however, an easy task, and he is constantly in conflict with the dominant society that spurs in him feelings of anger and frustration, alienation and despair. Not just a typical alienated artist, Wittman is a person who has never had a viable sense of self since he has lived in the margins all his life. Suffering from social and psychological isolation, he even "entertain[s]" the idea of suicide, though in the next instant dismisses it as only a fantasy, saying it was just "the run of his mind. He was not making plans to do himself in" (3).(4) Having acquired a liberal arts education from Berkeley which taught him to "keep asking what's really going on" (45), Wittman finds it hard to adjust to the real world. Acutely aware of his outsider status, Wittman, "the fool for books," lets his abundant imagination fictionalize the world around him, risking alienation from felt experience. The narrator in Tripmaster Monkey admonishes him, saying he "ought to swear off reading for a while, and find his own life" (168).

The luxury of consciously moving from the center to the margins and detachedly observing life from there while fulfilling his artistic potential is simply not available to Wittman. Already in the margins, pushed there by the dominant society because of his race and ethnicity, he would only isolate himself further by not participating in life. While a postmodern "self-conscious outsider" like Ambrose Mensch in John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse may realize the risk of a "non-being, non-identity" in such a subject position (Malmgren 9), for an artist of color like Wittman, it is a condition he has been forced to live with all his life because of his racial identity and not because of his artistic sensibility. Systematically excluded and marginalized, he knows what it means to be an outsider and a "non-being, non-identity" in a society that refuses to accept him as a legitimate member. Wittman cannot be the "artist, like the God of creation, [who] remains within or behind or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails" (Joyce 217). As Abdul JanMohamed and David Lloyd say, "the nonidentity of minorities remains the sign of material damage to which the only coherent response is struggle, not ironic distance" (16). Thus, it is crucial for Wittman not to remain aloof or distance himself from society if he is to assert his identity as an American and an artist, if he is to remove the shroud of invisibility with which the dominant society has covered him.

Wittman's growth, both as an artist and as a human being, is central to the narrative in Tripmaster Monkey. His conflict with the existing power structure of the dominant society, of its hegemonic control and systematic denial of equal participation in the political, ideological, economic, and cultural policies of the state, complicates his process of finding self-definition and agency.(5) Even after five generations of ancestors on American soil, Wittman is still asked where he comes from, how long has he been in this country, or if he can speak English. The color of his skin, the features on his face reflect his Chinese ancestry, and he is automatically seen as a non-American or an "alien" by a majority of people for whom the image of an American precludes a person of color.(6) Over and over again he emphasizes that "his province is America. America, his province" (41). Insisting that he be acknowledged as an American, Wittman says, "I declare my looks -- perfect.... So it's not Mount Rushmore, but it's an American face" (314). Claiming his right to the legacy of the American West, Wittman finds bizarre connections, or imagines these connections, proclaiming that John Wayne and Roy Rogers, the archetypal cowboys, had Chinese eyes; or to reverse the analogy, he, Wittman Ah Sing and all Chinese Americans have "cowboy eyes." Wittily, he says, "We have eyes that won the West" (314). By declaring his eyes American, Wittman is clearly validating a physical feature of Asian Americans that has been subject to countless racist jokes and stereotypes.(7)

Demanding the right to grow up unencumbered by stereotypes and pre-defined behavior, Wittman rebels against the pressure of the dominant society to subscribe to the "model minority" paradigm, to be the quiet, contained, hard-working, submissive, noninterfering, subservient, pleasing person.(8) Refusing to follow that model, Wittman constantly subverts it in his choice of clothes, aggressive behavior, and garrulous manner, so as to allow multiple aspects of his personality to develop without being circumscribed within a pre-coded pattern. He is keenly aware of the harm of this kind of compartmentalization of minorities in that it promotes stereotypes, denies them access to full participation within the dominant society, and ultimately renders them politically powerless and disenfranchised. This is exactly what Wittman, "the monkey, master of change" (306) wants to alter. He wants Asian Americans to move from an unobtrusive object position to an assertive subject position within American society, and to be "viewed ... as men and women with minds, wills, and voices" (Takaki 7). Within this context, then, Wittman's garrulousness signifies liberation from years of silence of oppressed Asian Americans and other minorities. He gives voice to the frustrations and anger of the Bak Goongs (China Men) who were forced into silence and had to invent ingenious ways to talk.

Constantly changing, radically reinventing himself, Wittman is forever in a state of flux. It is impossible to fix one particular identity upon him, for he is a host of complexities and multiplicities existing simultaneously. The seventy-two transformations of the Monkey, the trickster figure in Wu Ch'eng-en's The Journey to the West,(9) are a perfect metaphor for the multiple transformations of identity marginalized persons must undergo in order to survive in a hostile environment that is constantly stereotyping them. The old paradigm of the dual personality, of the either/or divide between the Chinese and American selves is totally irrelevant for Wittman. He does not have a "stripe down [his] back ... [with the] yellow side and the American side" (328) despite what the dominant culture continues to believe. It is impossible to separate the two identities, which are inextricably connected in Wittman's psyche and personality. He is both Gwan Goong and Marlon Brando (140); Superman and the King of Monkeys. "`Listen, Lois,'" he says to Nanci, "`underneath these glasses'--ripping the glasses off, wiping them on his sleeve ... `I am really: the present-day USA incarnation of the King of Monkeys'" (33). It is this negotiation between multiplicities and cultural hybridities that Kingston continues to explore throughout Tripmaster Monkey.

Other than his problems with the dominant society, Wittman also has a conflict with his ethnic community. Chinese-American society demands that he work at a "good" job so that he can establish himself economically, socially, and politically within the dominant society. "Work" not "play," or, to use Sau-ling Cynthia Wong's terminology, "Necessity," not "Extravagance," should be the guiding force in his life (171). Wittman's ethnic society's insistence upon the usefulness of work needs to be seen within the context of the socio-historic conditions of Asian immigrants in America, whose survival in this land depended on their ability to be good and useful workers. As Wong points out:

   from the "coolies" of the nineteenth century to today's technicians and
   nonmanagerial professions, the historical role of Asian Americans has been
   to serve the interests of the dominant society as "good workers":
   industrious, focused, dependable, accommodating, serious-minded, eminently
   useful. (210)

Consequently, transgressing this code was seen as sheer self-indulgence by a marginalized, survival-minded community.

Kingston, who is constantly undermining essentialized definitions of Asian Americans in Tripmaster Monkey, reverses this formula and dispels the myth of the serious-minded Chinese-Americans who spend all their time working at boring jobs with the single goal of making money. Wittman's parents, Ruby and Zeppelin Ah Sing, are performers, and they are totally unlike this image of the "typical" Chinese-Americans. In her choice of vocation for Ruby and Zeppelin, Kingston is not only underscoring the absurdity of categorizing the behavior and lifestyle of an entire race or group of people, but is also paving the path for Wittman to fulfill his dream as an artist.

With parents in show business, the pressure on Wittman from them or the Chinese-American community to do "useful" work is not as overpowering as is the case with the frustrated Asian American writer, Fred Eng, in Frank Chin's The Year of the Dragon. Fred believes his tyrannical father and the rigid, dogmatic Chinatown culture are responsible for suppressing his artistic pursuits by insisting that such a vocation is socially irresponsible and primarily self-indulgent. Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed states:

   almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed,
   instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors,
   or "sub-oppressors." The very structure of their thought has been
   conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by
   which they were shaped. This ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is
   to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity. (29-30)

Fred imagines he can be a writer once he is away from his "suboppressors": his ethnic community and family. He naively continues to believe that a utopian world of artistic freedom exists "out there." For Wittman, that world of creative freedom is here and now, within his ethnic and the dominant American societies. He refuses to fetishize money and materialistic values, and advocates instead a more bohemian lifestyle, very much in keeping with the counter-culture of the sixties. Reversing the belief that all Chinese immigrants had come to America to make money, Wittman insists that "the difference between us and other pioneers, we didn't come here for the gold streets. We came to play" (249-50).(10)

Wittman, eventually, gives up his meaningless jobs and devotes himself full time to writing, directing, and producing his play. "`Yes, the play's the thing'" says Wittman (34), echoing Hamlet's celebrated phrase. Surely Kingston, with her propensity to play with words intended the pun on "play" here: to make theater and to have fun. Wittman's "play" turns out to be serious work since it aims to build community and arouse political consciousness among minorities. His artistic venture has a social purpose, and perhaps that is what redeems him in the eyes of his survival-minded ethnic community, unlike its implicit censure of Mrs. Hiyashi in Hisaye Yamamoto's "Seventeen Syllables." Mrs. Hiyashi's forays into haiku poetry are considered individualistic and self-indulgent by her husband, who is a member of a community that is struggling to survive in a hostile environment. It appears that the Asian American society in these works is less forgiving of artists whose art does not "serve" society.

Wittman, however, is not always tolerant of his Chinese-American community. In fact, in the opening scenes of the novel, he is a self-absorbed, intolerant, acutely self-conscious young man. Critical of anybody and everybody, he directs his critical gaze on a recently immigrated Chinese family referring to them contemptuously as "Fresh Off the Boats." Derogative of their dress, of their actions, of their behavior, he finds them so "uncool!" (5).(11) Projecting his own confusion and insecurities about his identity onto them, he is ashamed to be associated with such people and wants to distance himself from them. Deep down it seems he is scared of being taken for a "F.O.B." Sau-ling Cynthia Wong's theory of the "racial shadow," of "projecting undesirable `Asianness' outward onto a double ... render[ing] alien what is, in fact literally inalienable, thereby disowning and distancing it" (78), is clearly applicable to Wittman. His feelings of superiority are ridiculous, given the fact that the dominant society, whose racist myths he has partially internalized, does not accept him as an equal. The color of his skin, which is the same as that of the Chinese family of whom he is so critical, will mark him "Other" in the eyes of the dominant society despite his considerable Americanization. Kingston rightly says, "What's so horrible about stereotypes is that sometimes they will be superimposed onto a real person who does act like that and then you push them away" (Kingston, "Interview" 788). This is precisely what Wittman does with the family in the park and in his conversation with the Chinese-American girl, Judy, whom he meets on a bus. Everything about her irritates him: her "plain" looks, her "greasy bundles," her assumption that he "has to hear her out" because she was a "fellow her out" because she was a "fellow ethnick." But most of all, he gets annoyed when she categorizes him as a "Chinese man" who ought to develop himself not "only mentally but physically, spiritually, and socially" (73-75).

Besides being an intolerant person, Wittman is also a sexist. He expects Tana to be the dutiful little wife who would cook and clean for him. But Tana, a nascent feminist, challenges and subverts his sexist behavior. Wittman's marriage to Tana also proves to be a lesson in inter-racial relationship for him. Inter-racial marriage, an age-old formula for assimilation and acceptance that had prompted many anti-miscegenation laws (Takaki 101-02) in order to maintain the "purity" of the race, is used in a totally different way by Kingston in Tripmaster Monkey. Instead of being a gateway to acceptance in the dominant society, or a way to "become more American through marriage" (Kingston "Cultural Mis-readings" 60), it becomes a site for the growth and maturation of Wittman. Most importantly, it allows him to do this without compromising his ethnic identity. Paranoid about his identity as a Chinese-American, Wittman tries to "spy out specific racism" even when he and Tana are talking intimately after making love (156). He decides if Tana "turns out to be a freak for orientalia, [he'd] kick her out of bed. She [was] not getting any mysterious East from [him]" (155). Perversely, he even calls her racist and sexist names, "`Blonde chick. White girl ... loose white girl'" (151), trying to provoke a reaction from her.

Tana ignores him and does not dump him "for acting racist," as the narrator suggests she should (151). She turns out to be a sensitive person who realizes that Wittman's terrible insecurities, arising from years of racism, need to be handled gently so as to give him a sense of self-worth. She accepts him as a person, and though she is critical of his sexist behavior and wants him to change that, she does not want him to compromise his ethnic identity. The positive effect of this inter-racial relationship on Wittman spills over in his play, making it more inclusive. He learns to be "a brother, a friend, a husband to some stranger passing through" (164).(12)

During the course of the narrative in Tripmaster Monkey, it becomes evident that Wittman's attitude toward people in general--especially Chinese, Chinese-Americans, and women--is significantly changed. His previous sarcasm and lack of patience gives way to accommodation and acceptance of others. Even when he uses the term "F.O.B." for Siew Loong and his gang, he almost says it in an endearing and affectionate manner. He even includes Siew Loong's show in the play, agreeing to his proposal, "I act you theater; you act me theater" (281). Judy Lois, his "blue boar" also becomes a part of his play, as do the "old futs" from Chinatown whom he couldn't suffer earlier. "Do the right thing by whoever crosses your path. Those coincidental people are your people" becomes the motto of his life (223).

Wittman's sense of tolerance and accommodation is further reflected in his relationship with his parents, making him more understanding of them than ever before. His earlier irritation and impatience with his mother, when she would lecture him on his careless attitude and insist that he become a "clean-cut All American" boy (187), is now tempered and mellowed. As a teenager he used to be ashamed of his father, but now he realizes what an undemanding person he is, and that he ought to "appreciate a father who doesn't dictate much, nor hit, drink, nor hang around having habits that use up all the room" (204). Even though Wittman does not have a perfect relationship with his parents, he does not feel the complete estrangement or alienation that many traditional artist figures like Eugene Gant feel. In Look Homeward, Angel, Eugene bitterly says to his family, "The first move I ever made, after the cradle, was to crawl for the door, and every move I have made since has been an effort to escape" (456). With each stage of his development, Eugene separates himself from his family physically, emotionally, and psychologically, and eventually severs all ties with them. Wittman's growth and maturation, instead of separating him from his family, leads him to form a stronger connection with them.

II

"We make theater, we make community."

Wittman's growth as a human being and as an artist is primarily the result of his coming to terms with the complex equation between individualism and community, to "reconcile unity and identity" (105). Having been born and brought up in a country that promotes rugged individualism, where power, especially male white power, is associated with it, it is inevitable that Wittman has ingested some of this ideology. "An American stands alone. Alienated, tribeless, individual. To be a successful American, leave your tribe ... behind" is the message Wittman gets from the movie he is made to watch in the Unemployment Office (246). But he soon realizes that the power which comes with white male individualism can never be his as long as he is defined by the color of his skin. Therefore for Wittman, the ideology of individualism can hardly be beneficial and would isolate him even further instead of giving him a sense of identity. He needs to figure out a different way, an alternative concept of identity to the idea of American individualism.

A sense of community guides Wittman in his search, for along with the ideology of individualism he has also imbibed the lessons of communal love and responsibility from his extended Chinese and Chinese-American "family." The basic idea of community, of sharing and togetherness, of belonging and responsibility, is something he has grown up with. But Wittman never romanticizes the concept of community. In fact, there are several aspects of his ethnic community of which he is critical, for instance, the intolerance of some of the old people in Chinatown who give young college kids like him the "stink-eye" and find fault with their "attee-tood" (10-11). Yet Wittman believes it "would pain a true Chinese to admit that he or she did not have a community, or belonged at the bottom or the margin" (10). He is aware that the Chinese "genius for community" is degenerating (255), and he wants to help preserve this characteristic of his ethnic culture. Asserting the importance of culture for minorities, JanMohamad and Lloyd say:

   to the extent that [Third world and minority] peoples are systematically
   marginalized vis-a-vis the global economy, one might see the resort to
   cultural modes of struggle as all the more necessary.... For many
   minorities, culture is not a mere superstructure; all too often, in an
   ironic twist of a Sartrean phenomenology, the physical survival of minority
   groups depends on the recognition of its culture as viable. (5-6)

Wittman realizes that in spite of everything, it gives him and other Chinese-Americans a sense of identity and self-definition.

While the traditional Kunstlerroman promotes or endorses the development of an autonomous self, in a Kunstlerroman like Tripmaster Monkey, the maturation of the collective subjectivity assumes a significant role. The underlying story behind Wittman's growth as an artist is the growing political consciousness of oppressive racial definitions in the Asian American community. Wittman belongs to the Civil Rights and Anti-War era of the sixties, a time when the Asian American Movement began with young Asian American students rallying together for "racial equality, social justice, and political empowerment" (Wei 1). As William Wei in The Asian American Movement points out, they soon realized that in order to be politically effective they needed to act collectively and empower themselves by coming together as one people.

In Tripmaster Monkey Wittman combines his individual artistic goals with a communal vision, and the result is his play. He says to the "Outcasts of America.... We make theater, we make community" (261), thus finding a way to "entertain and educate the solitaries that make up a community" (288). This is the lesson that Lone, the solitary artist in David Henry Hwang's The Dance and the Railroad, eventually learns. Initially critical of his fellow Chinese workers, whom he believes "are dead," he is alienated from both the dominant and his ethnic societies. Practicing his dance alone at the mountaintop after spending the "whole day chipping half an inch of rock" (Hwang 73), Lone's art separates him even more from the people around him. It is only after Ma convinces him that the strike by the Chinese railroad workers is the beginning of their growing political consciousness that he uses his art to connect with them, which helps bring about a sense of community and solidarity.

Wittman knows that building community is not easy and everyone has to actively engage in it, for it is "not built once-and-all; people have to imagine, practice and recreate it" (306). He believes he can do this by writing and producing a unique play that involves "everyone and everything" (277). His pluralistic play, some sort of a Chinese-American epic, interweaves elements of Chinese legends and novels along with American tales and history, "high" and "low" culture; it is all-encompassing and "contains multitudes," to use a Whitmanesque phrase.

Wittman chooses to write and perform a play, believing it to be a more interactive and social medium than poetry, his initial artistic genre, which is comparatively solitary in nature. He writes a play that is flexible in form, that performers can add to, change, and improvise as they perform: "to do improv, a process as ancient as Chinese opera and as far-out as the theater of spontaneity that was happening in streets and parks" (141). Like the fake book of Jazz musicians, from which they improvise and create new music, Wittman's play is his Fake Book that would inspire others to improvise, add to it, and change it.(13) Significantly, instead of feeling threatened by the improvisations or resenting the lack of authorial control, he is intrigued that his actors show him "what happens next" (141). Wittman's play, then, is not solely the result of his individual artistic vision but becomes a collaborative effort, a joint venture that combines different people's stories and experiences. This kind of a communal artistic endeavor would be totally out of place within the individualistic paradigm of the traditional Kunstlerroman where isolated individualism is the hallmark of the artist.

Another reason Wittman wants to do theater is because in the theater "he didn't need descriptions that racinated anybody. The actors will walk out on stage and their looks will be self-evident. They will speak dialects and accents, which the audience will get upon hearing" (34). And since he wants to cast "blind ... the actors can be any race. Each member of the Tyrone family or the Lomans can be of a different color" (52). Through this radical approach, Wittman is making room for actors of diverse ethnicities and race, believing that American theater should represent a multitude of people with different features, skin color, accents, and dialects. As a playwright, director, and actor, Wittman wants to break the existing hegemony of the dominant society in art and literature. He wants to claim his right to be recognized as an Asian American artist with a unique vision, one who neither panders to the stereotypical expectations of the dominant culture (to be exotic) nor compromises his ethnic identity in any way (not to be exotic). He wants to start a new tradition in American theater that would enable marginalized groups in American society to tell their stories on their own terms.

Evidently for Wittman, art is not an escape from "the dull gross voice of the world of duties and despair," nor is it a way to surmount "the house of squalor and subterfuge" (Joyce 174-75). He is not looking for escape or transcendence in art from the "house of squalor," which in his case is the house of racism. On the contrary, Wittman wants to use art to expose racism, to talk about it openly, and to direct attention toward it with the hope that this awareness will help minorities to fight it. Art is also not the means "to attain the harmonious development of personality," as it is for Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, who believes that only in the theater can he liberate himself from the constraints of a bourgeois existence and begin his quest for self-culture (175). Having an "irresistible desire" to "develop [himself] fully," Wilhelm asserts that only "on the stage a cultured human being can appear in the full splendor of his person, just as in the upper classes of society" (Goethe 175).(14)

Wittman's art, his play, becomes a site of cultural and political struggle and survival, of resistance and rebellion for all Chinese-Americans. Frantz Fanon calls this kind of literature, a "literature of combat ... because it assumes responsibility, and because it is the will to liberty expressed in terms of time and space" (240). Wittman's play is a passionate call for resisting the hegemonic control of the dominant society over the cultural, social, ideological, political, and economic lives of Chinese-Americans. Though in his "One-Man Show" he claims the "I," it is not just an egotistic and individualistic desire. He says, "They depict us with an inability to say `I.' They're taking the `I' away from us. `Me'--that's the fucked over, the fuckee. `I'--that's the mean-ass motherfucker first-person pronoun, of the active voice, and they don't want us to have it" (318, emphasis added). Wittman is demanding the right to an individual identity, free from stereotypical constructs of Asian passivity and the images of a linguistically challenged Charlie Chan saying, "me no likee" or the "bucktoof" Mickey Rooney type (318). He is rebelling against the loss of Chinese-American individuality, of diverse and complex being. He is critical of being lumped together as one group of people with the same characteristics, behavior, and mentality. Nancy Hartsock, referring to Albert Memmi's The Colonizer and the Colonized, says "the Others are not seen [by the colonizer] as fellow individual members of the human community, but rather as part of a chaotic, disorganized, and anonymous collectivity" (22). This is precisely what Wittman is angry about when he says, "they willfully do not learn us, and blame that on us, that we have an essential unknowableness" (310). The stereotype of the exotic, inscrutable, Oriental, which all "Chinese-looking" people are supposed to be, infuriates him. He explodes,"We're about as exotic as shit" (308).

Clearly there is a difference between the quest for an "I" of the centered individualist belonging to the dominant society and that of the "I" of the marginalized and stereotyped minority. The minority's demand for an "I" becomes a war-cry to revolutionize the way the dominant culture perceives it by resisting the oppressive essentialized definitions of identity promoted by that culture, to make room for complexities and contradictions, for multiplicities and differences. Barbara Christian discusses the politically charged quest for an "I" by women of color, who "are struggling to define themselves (i.e. gain the `I') within a material and historical reality that would render them `other'" (338). More than just a search for self-definition, this becomes a strategy for survival, an endeavor to render visible what is deemed invisible by the dominant society. Trying to promote a sense of identity and self-worth, Wittman says to his audience:

   We used to have a mighty "I," but we lost it. At one time whenever we said
   "I," we said "I-warrior".... To say "I" was to say "I fight" .... We are
   the grandchildren of Gwan the Warrior. Don't let them take the fight out of
   our spirit and language. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I-warrior, win the West
   and the Earth and the Universe. (319)

Being a pacifist at heart, Wittman is not advocating violence and killing but is appropriating a martial trope paradoxically to bring about a peaceful revolution, believing "what's crazy is the idea that revolutionaries must shoot and bomb and kill, that revolution is the same as war" (305).

Like the trickster Monkey, Wittman too "brings chaos to established order" (Kingston, MELUS Interview 61), upsetting the status quo, and urging other minority groups to do the same. "Let me help you get offended" (308), he says to his fellow actors who, having internalized the stereotypes about Chinese-Americans, cheer at the reviews of the play. Discussing the ideological significance of the "tendency to assimilate others' discourse," Bakhtin says, "another's discourse performs here no longer as information, directions, rules, models and so forth--but strives rather to determine the very basis of our behavior; it performs here as authoritative discourse and an internally persuasive discourse" (342). Trying to decolonize the minds(15) of the people who have absorbed the "authoritative discourse," Wittman angrily asks, "What's to cheer about?" as he lists phrases from the reviews: "`East meets West.' `Exotic.' `Sweet and sour.'" (307). It "pisses" him off that some reviewers call the play "exotic" while others call it "not exotic" (308). Appropriating Hamlet's eternal question, Wittman says, "To be exotic or to be not-exotic is not a question." Once again he demands recognition as an American artist, free from preconceived and socially constructed notions of a Chinese-American artist. Wittman's cry echoes Kingston's own frustrations at the gross misreadings of Woman Warrior and China Men by some critics who saw the books as a guided tour of Chinatown and as an explanation of the "exotic" and the "inscrutable" Chinese values and traditions ("Cultural Misreadings").

Wittman passionately urges all Chinese-Americans to come together as one people, believing it will give them a sense of solidarity and empower them to contest and eventually disempower the oppressive forces within the dominant culture. However, he is certainly not advocating any essentialist Chinese-Americanness, for he is very aware that the identity politics of sameness could be limiting and may preclude diversity. Further, it would unwittingly support the dominant society's continuing attempts to categorize Asian Americans as one fixed category. Lisa Lowe stresses the importance of asserting the "hetereogeneity, hybridity and multiplicity in the characterization of Asian American culture" and sees it as "a strategy to destabilize the dominant discursive construction and determination of Asian Americans as a homogeneous group" (28). Thus, Wittman is proposing to Chinese-Americans the seemingly paradoxical concept of having specificity in unity, and separateness in togetherness.

Wittman presents these views to his audience partly through talk-story, an integral feature of his ethnic culture that he incorporates in his play. Talk-story by nature is communal and instills bonding. It is inclusive and democratic, cutting across boundaries of age, literacy, gender, and class. Within the socio-historic context of Chinese immigrants in America, it becomes a tool for survival: giving a sense of solidarity, preserving ethnic culture, allowing self-expression, as well as providing entertainment and reprieve from the oppressive "white demon" society. Discussing the importance of talk-story in Kingston, Linda Ching Sledge says that Kingston has a "notion of the ethnic literary artist as one in a long line of performers shaping a recalcitrant history into talk-story form" (146). Wittman Ah Sing is surely a part of that literary tradition of oral story-telling, for he too is reshaping history as he recounts his experiences and that of his ancestors in his play. He becomes the maker of "history and not just the objects of those who have made history until now" (Hartsock 34).(16) Not only is Wittman rewriting the old stories, but he is creating new ones as he imagines the next stage in the old story that must evolve and change in order to remain meaningful and alive. Kingston says:

   [In Tripmaster Monkey] I want to write a prose book similar in a way to
   those music fake books. I give many basic melodies. I tell people ideas for
   more books.... they can improvise from those basic plots and they can
   finish the stories for me. (Hurley 85)

In a complex manner, Kingston is writing a novel with a flexible form to which readers can add to, delete, digress, or change, and participate in the process of storytelling that goes on with infinite possibilities for new stories.

Storytelling, language, and words are powerful instruments of communication, and Kingston seems to be suggesting that it is possible to substitute discourse for weapons of war, to resolve conflicts without resorting to violent means. Wong sees in Wittman's play a "faith in the performative power of language to talk something into existence--word magic" (207). Wittman is, in fact, trying to build a community and bring about change through language and words as he discards instruments of "blasting and blazing [which] are too wordless" (306).

Though writing and staging a modern day Chinese-American version of the classic Chinese war epic, The Three Kingdoms, Wittman is not promoting a martial identity in an attempt to counteract the racist stereotype of the emasculated Asian American male in American society. He is, however, extremely conscious of his Asian American manhood and sarcastically says, "We're deballed and other worldly, we don't have the natural fucking urges of the average, that is the white human being" (320). Haunted by images of emasculation, he finds them even in Kerouac, who refers to the "twinkling little Chinese" in his poem (69). Wittman, along with Lance "the dove brother" who is the true pacifist in Tripmaster Monkey, improvises the heroic and military code of The Three Kingdoms, making a "parody of warfare" (Noelle Williams 93). Pacifism does not mean non-action or passivity; neither does it mean to be weak or ineffectual. Subverting the traditional heroic meaning associated with martial activity, Kingston is making a case for an alternative identity. At the same time she is taking a dig at her most vocal critic, Frank Chin, who, along with some of his colleagues, promotes a warrior identity for Asian American males as the only way to regain their manhood in American society. Kingston is underscoring the destructive nature of such a recourse and is proposing an active non-violent identity as a viable alternative.

Though it may be arguable whether any writing is indeed entirely devoid of a political position, writings by most contemporary American writers of color have an overt political agenda. They are writing not simply to expose the multiple oppression that their communities suffer, but to demand and assert their rightful position in American society today. Minority writers do not have the luxury to indulge in art for art's sake, which Chinua Achebe says, "is just another piece of deodorised dog-shit" (19). For most writers of color, the role of a neutral or uninvolved spectator-artist is just not possible when the cultural, social, and economic survival of their communities are in jeopardy. Emphasizing the political intent of Tripmaster Monkey, Kingston says that she meant Wittman to be very political, to figure out a way to bring community and harmony amidst the chaos of American society (Moyers). At the end of Tripmaster Monkey, though Wittman is still in the process of developing his artistic and political identities, there is little doubt that they are inextricably linked together. Just as his play becomes a site of political struggle and contestation for all Asian Americans, Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey also seeks to fill in the gaps within the dominant discourse that ignores or suppresses the narratives of Asian Americans and renders them powerless and disenfranchised. Kingston is not simply deconstructing received notions of stereotypes of Asian Americans promoted by the hegemonic society, but is validating an alternative vision of an Asian American artist.(17)

Wittman Ah Sing represents Kingston's image of an Asian American artist as a person who is not necessarily a genius or a god-like figure separated from society, but one who is intimately involved with the lives of the people around him, who is committed to bring about change in American society, and who uses art as a medium to achieve the goal of equality for all minorities in the U.S. More than just an exercise in aesthetic experimentation, art becomes a site of resistance and rebellion in the hands of such an artist. By foregrounding the racial identity and the communal impulse in an artist rather than the artistic sensibility and individualistic goal, Kingston is not only deviating from the traditional Kunstlerroman, but she is forcing a re-evaluation of that tradition. Challenging the idea that artists feel alienated in a hostile society primarily because of unique artistic and intellectual sensibility, she shows how artists' racial identities can marginalize and disenfranchise them from the moment of birth in a racist and hegemonic society. Moreover, she shatters the image of artists on autonomous quests for artistic fulfillment, suggesting instead artists whose artistic goals are intrinsically connected with a communal vision. Instead of separating from family and society in order to pursue their art, they find a deeper connection with the community as they use art to bring about a positive change in American society. By insisting on the primacy of an artist's ethnic and racial identity, which as Gloria Anzaldua says one "can't take off" and leave at the door of a "study or studio" (xxiv), Kingston in Tripmaster Monkey rewrites the discourse of a "typical" individualistic and alienated artist-protagonist.

Notes

(1.) Frank Chin's infamous attack on Kingston, accusing her of malicious misinterpretation of Chinese myths and legends to conform to her feminist purposes and pandering to a white readership, fueled further interest in the genre debate surrounding The Woman Warrior. ("Come All" 1-92).

(2.) Though named after the great American poet, Walt Whitman, Wittman Ah Sing's parents and "aunties" call him "Wit Man." He is, in fact, a person who lives by his wits as he tries to outwit the oppressive forces surrounding him.

(3.) Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, Hwang's The Dance and the Railroad (though not a novel, it tells the story of the growth of an artist), Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey and The Woman Warrior have several of these features; a Kunstlerroman like Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory differs in significant ways.

(4.) This tone of uncertainty and flux, of contradictions and paradoxes, a typical characteristic of Kingston's writing, is evident not only in this episode but in the entire novel, underscoring the impossibility of fixing meaning. Perhaps one of the most interesting examples is about the identity of PoPo. Is she Wittman's grandmother? Is she his father's first wife? Is she Japanese or Chinese?

(5.) Hegemony "is a whole body of practices and expectations, over the whole of living: our senses and assignments of energy, our shaping perceptions of ourselves and our world. It is a lived system of meanings and values" (Raymond Williams 110).

(6.) Referred to as aliens, Chinese immigrants were allowed to become naturalized citizens only after 1944, nearly a hundred years after they first set foot on American soil (Takaki 375-78; Daniels 196).

(7.) Later in the novel, Wittman says to the audience of his play, "And do you know what part of our bodies they find so mysteriously inscrutable? It's our little eyes. They think they can't see into these little squinny eyes. They think we're sneaky, squinnying at them through spy eyes. They can't see inside here past these slits" (312).

(8.) See Takaki (474-84), Daniels (317-21), and Chan (167-68) for the socio-political importance of the "model minority" paradigm.

(9.) Like the Monkey King, his muse and soulmate, Wittman too makes a journey, though unlike that of the Monkey King, his journey is not to the West, but a journey "in the West" (308).

(10.) Fessler gives evidence that a Chinese theater existed in San Francisco as early as 1851: "a large troupe of Chinese opera performers arrived in San Francisco in October 1852, and others soon followed." A Chinese immigrant businessman by the name of Norman As-sing, [Ah Sing?] is believed to have been the financier and promoter of these troupes (80-81).

(11.) This is a theme that recurs in Asian American literature. Hwang entitled his 1979 play FOB, in which Dale, the Asian American protagonist, expresses his disgust in this way: "clumsy, ugly, greasy FOB. Loud, stupid, four-eyed FOB. Big feet. Horny.... They are the sworn enemies of all ABC ... `American Born Chinese'" (7).

(12.) Some feminist critics have expressed disappointment at Kingston's choice of a male protagonist in Tripmaster Monkey and at its lack of an overt feminist agenda. However, if the role of women in this novel is seen within the context of their traditionally defined role in a typical Kunstlerroman, it is clear that Kingston has radically redefined it. She totally discards the woman-as-destroyer-of-the-artist or the femme fatale category and revises the role of woman-as-muse, thus breaking the stereotypes of both the `man-eating,' blood-sucking vampire and the self-effacing, sacrificing woman.

(13.) The Fake Book in the subtitle also addresses the question of reality and fiction with which critics have bombarded Kingston since the publication of The Woman Warrior. By declaring upfront the "fake" and fictive nature of the book, she attempts to prevent her critics from misreading it; and yet, the ambiguity in her style in Tripmaster Monkey challenges their notion of an essential and fixed reality or truth. Her "fake book" teases readers and critics alike as they grapple with what is real or unreal, fact or fiction.

(14.) Blackall states that Goethe's original plan in the earlier fragment Wilhelm Meister's Theatrical Calling had to be revised in Apprenticeship, for there was a conflict between the "lofty concept of the theater as moral institution and the desire to present a true picture of the life of actors, which was often immoral" (Goethe 384).

(15.) Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o uses this phrase.

(16.) Wittman's encounter with Mrs. Chew in the Unemployment Office provides him with an opportunity to learn about Chinese and Chinese-American history through her "talk-stories" (233-37).

(17.) It is essential to keep in mind that Kingston's image of an Asian American artist is not necessarily representative of other Asian American writers.

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Irma Maini is Assistant Professor of English at New Jersey City University, where she teaches Ethnic American literature, World literature, Women's literature, and writing. She has published articles on Anita Desai and Graham Greene.