The Iron Curtain of Language

The Iron Curtain of language not only blocks the perception of positive fea­tures of China and Chinese culture, the humanities of China men and Chinese women, more seriously , it denies critics the ability to articulate what they actually see or read in Kingston’s texts. Hence cultural misreadings a central issue in Kingston criticism. The stereotypes Kingston demystifies with her postmodem fic­tive strategies, the refreshing ideas, images, and metaphorical language that she recreates through the performance of “puppet shows” are unnamable in everyday American English. They are lost in literary criticism, in the dead language of American Orientalism, with which critics criticize unthinkingly on the subject of China, China men, Chinese women, Chinese culture and tradition.

To lift the Iron Curtain of language in academic writing, if possible at all, it is the scholar’s job to name the unnamable, empty the signs and idioms in Orien­talism, and invent a new language, which must be antibiotic, affirmative, and liberating, as the fictionists do in creative writing. . .

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