摘 要

伍绮诗是新一代美籍华裔作家。她的作品主要关注跨文化、跨种族家庭背景下的亲子关系。《无声告白》这部小说便描写了李家中华裔父亲、白人母亲与三个孩子之间因缺少交流造成的悲剧。其种种交流问题以混血家庭为依托显得更为突出。华裔父亲与具有女权意识的母亲将种族、性别歧视视为禁忌话题，使得误解逐渐加深。两人也因缺少与孩子的交流造成了教育和亲子关系的失败并最终导致大女儿的沉湖悲剧。本论文聚焦于交流这一主题，分三个层面来依次探讨交流的重要性，分别为夫妻之间、亲子之间、家庭与社会之间。夫妻之间敞开心扉才能深入了解彼此，亲子之间恰当交流才能造就健康的亲子关系，家庭与外界有正常的社交才能真正融入社会。交流是人际交往的基础。适当交流可以化解矛盾，消除顾虑，以及促进人际关系。缺少交流则会增加误解。本论文旨在提醒世人重视交流，尽量避免因缺少交流而酿成不可挽回的惨剧。

关键词：沟通；沉默；误解；亲子关系

Abstract

Celeste Ng is a new-generation Chinese American writer. Her works focus on parent-child relationships in interracial families. Her first novel Everything I Never Told You narrates a tragedy caused by no effective communication. In mixed families, communication problems are more prominent. James is a Chinese American and Marilyn is a feminist. However, they never talk about the past, the racism or sexism, resulting in an accumulation of misunderstanding. Besides, they do not have effective communication with their children nor give proper guidance to them. It leads to the failure of parent-child relationship and the tragedy of Lydia’s death. This paper focuses on the theme of communication of three levels namely communication between husband and wife, parents and children, family and society. A couple should open their mind so that they can know each other better. Parents communicate with children in appropriate way so that they can improve parent-child relationship. A family should contact society and only in this way can they fit in. Effective communication can resolve disputes, comfort others and improve interpersonal relationships. This paper analyzes the problem of communication in Everything I Never Told You for the purpose of raising general awareness about the importance of communication.

Key Words: communication; silence; misunderstanding; parent-child relationships.

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Celeste Ng and Everything I Never Told You 1

1.2 Literature Review 2

2 Communication between Husband and Wife 4

2.1 A Wrong Pact 4

2.2 A Late Quarrel 5

3 Communication between Parents and Children 7

3.1 Nath: No Sense of Belonging 7

3.2 Lydia: No Sense of Security 8

3.3 Hannah: No Sense of Existence 9

4 Communication between the Family and the Society 11

4.1 Parents：Stereotype and Passivity 11

4.2 Children：Misunderstandings and Refusal 12

5 Conclusion 14

References 15

Lack of Communication in

Everything I Never Told You

1 Introduction

1.1 Celeste Ng and Everything I Never Told You

Celeste Ng is a new-generation Chinese-American immigrant writer with some accomplishments in writing. She won the Pushcart Prize and the Hopwood Award. Born in 1980, Celeste Ng grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and moved to Shaker Heights, Ohio at ten years old. There were very few Asians in the two places. Hence, she had little contact with Asians except her parents when she was in pre-adulthood. Her parents were immigrants from Hongkong. Her father was a physicist working for NASA and her mother was a chemist^[1]. They knew they were different and insisted that their daughter Celeste should represent their race to some extent(Arun, 2014). Then, Celeste got a bachelor's degree in English at Harvard University and she earned a MFA in writing at the University of Michigan. She is at present in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her own family is a biracial family and she has a son^[2].

As a well-educated woman, she did not lose her race identity. Her works present the Asian American life. Her fiction and essays have been published in One Story, TriQuarterly, Subtropics. Bellevue Literary Review, the Kenyon Review Online and elsewhere^[3]. She has published Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere yet. Her latest novel Little Fires Everywhere was issued in 2017 and would be adapted into a TV series. Both of her novels focus on parent-child relationships in biracial and multicultural background.

At the end of 2014, Everything I Never Told You became American Amazon's best-selling book. The novel puts emphasis on the oppressive feelings of each family number in the Lees. Lacking of communication is the main problem for this family. The father James Lee is a Chinese American. He thinks that his communication channel is blocked by his race. Naturally, he dares not to take initiative in communication and he becomes incompatible with the others. The mother Marilyn is an American, and she has always been better than men since she was a child. Nevertheless, her mother wants her to have a “normal” life—get married and give birth to babies. And then she does lose herself after pregnancy and marriage. Obviously, she cannot give up her career at that time. She desires to do some academic work again. The two trap themselves in their own thoughts and have no effective communication. This leads to Marilyn’s leaving home. Marilyn once disappears without a word to re-study medical courses when Nath and Lydia are kids. After she comes back, the problem of no communication gets worse. The parents have no attempt to know their children. In such a family background, the eldest daughter Lydia becomes a victim of the dysfunctional family. She absorbs her parents’ dreams and she never says “no”. Her father wants her to be a gregarious person, while her mother wants her to get straight A’s in the class and study advanced subjects. James and Marilyn do not detect her unwillingness. Finally, she is drowned in the lake. In addition, James and Marilyn also ignore Nath and Hannah. Lydia’s elder brother Nath has been treated unfairly for a long time and he knows his parents will not listen to him. Consequently, he has been longing for leaving home and he gets the offer from Harvard. Hannah totally retreats from the others’ view. Her family members never get to know the little creature. Eventually the family slides into chaos because of Lydia’s death. The tragedy caused by no effective communication raises the Lees’ awareness to speak out and listen to each other. The suspenseful and moving novel makes Celeste known to the world overnight.

1.2 Literature Review

Abroad, the best-selling book Everything I Never Told You enjoys a good fame. Nevertheless, the literary study on it has not been found in EBSCO, Elsevier SD database and Springer Link database. Yet there are some book reviews and interviews with the author. R. C. Lutz remarks that it is a sad yet very moving novel that explores the question of to what extent one person can ever truly know the mind and heart of a loved one in his article “Book Review of Everything I Never Told You” (Lutz, 2015). Julie Barer praises her, “Ng's prose is precise and sensitive, her characters richly drawn” (Barer, 2015). Some journalists interviewed Ng. Ng told TIME her childhood experiences and she told the National Public Radio about her opinion of racial identity. Even though, there are few deep studies on this novel.

There are more studies on Everything I Never Told You in China. Search on CNKI, 56 results have been found. Most of studies focus on gender, racial identity and Lydia’s tragedy. Some researchers study the gender issue in the novel. Zhang Dongmei in her essay “’Secrets I Have Never Told You’: On Racial and Gender Discrimination in Everything I Never Told You” discusses the struggle of a feminist in the ideal and in the reality slit (Zhang, 2018). Jin Jing in her essay “The Dilemma of Feminists and Cultural Identity” points out the gender stereotypes of women (Jin, 2017). Some lay special stress on racial identity. Wang Fang analyzes the sources of pressure for a Chinese in American in her paper “Gaze and Transcendence: Existentialism in Everything I Never Told You” (Wang, 2017). Some researchers examine the causes of Lydia’s tragedy. Li Runrun explores the causes in three aspects: social, family and individual (Li, 2016). Different from others, Li Rui summarizes the cultural values of this novel and mentions parent-child relationship (Li, 2017). Besides, there is only one paper focusing on the theme of communication. That is Huang Ying‘s “Motif of Communication Shadowed in Ethnicity and Culture in Everything I Never Told You.” She points out that mixed family is just a background, actually, Celeste Ng deepens the theme of communication(Huang，2016). Huang’s description about the family members is very detailed. However, she fails to elaborate the reasons for hiding their soul-searching from each other. She also wrongly thinks that the antagonism between brother and sister sharpens and she does not mention the communication problems between Lydia’s family and the society.