Conflicting Cultures in Gish Jen's Mona in the Promised Land
Novels that illustrate a confrontation between disparate cultures provide
particularly straightforward insights into basic human behavior.
Characters confronted with a cultural conflict must explore basic human
commonalities to breach the gap between the cultures. In doing so, one
diminishes the differences between her culture and the unknown culture,
ultimately bringing her closer to her raw humanity. Simultaneously, this
sets the stage for countless sociological case studies that may illuminate
important human behaviors that are otherwise masked by the bias of a
dominating culture. A prime subject for one such examination is Mona
Chang, a natural-born American who strives to overcome the cultural
pressure posed by her Chinese immigrant parents so that she may be
accepted by her peers. Appearing in Gish Jen's Mona in the Promised Land,
Chang finds herself in a situation that tests her identity as an American.
The test, occurring in her adolescence, proves inconclusive. In turn, it
motivates Chang to affirm her identity at the expense of her maturity-a
struggle that continues until she overcomes the factor that initially
questioned her identity. Thus, the cultural backdrop of Jen's Mona in the
Promised Land provides an excellent basis to study the human character,
from which one may infer that an incident that causes identity confusion
in one's adolescent life must be resolved before one may reach maturity.
In Chang's case, her oriental appearance pairs her with Sherman Matsumoto,
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... one must rely primarily upon the text itself as well as interviews with
Jen. Although few scholarly resources are available with pertinence to
this novel, it is not difficult to make a substantial argument for the
aforementioned themes. Naturally, those themes apply only to adolescents
who have not yet matured fully from a psychological perspective. In
conclusion, the cultural clash in Jen's Mona in the Promised Land allows
one to discern easily that one must figuratively conquer that which
troubles her sense of identity lest her maturity remain underdeveloped.
Works Cited
April Guest: Gish Jen. McDougal Littell Page. 1999.
<http://www.mcdougallittell.com/lit/guest/garchive/jen.htm>.
Jen, Gish. Mona in the Promised Land. New York: Vintage Contemporaries,
1997.
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