Title: Jewish Stigma and Identity Reconstruction: On Henry Roth’s Mercy of a Rude Stream

Abstract: Henry Roth explores in Mercy of a Rude Stream, an autobiographical novel, the stigma and identity crisis of Jews in a heterogeneous culture. By focusing on how Jewish people are stigmatized and their de-stigmatizing efforts, Roth constructs the identity paradigm of the stigmatized and illustrates their tough existence under the social, political and cultural hegemony. To eliminate stigma, they resort to assimilation and reconstruct their identity in accordance with the characteristics of people in the mainstream. However, they unconsciously fall into the imitation model of mirror images in the process and their appeal can never be heard. They will thus inevitably be alienated and encounter new identity crisis.

Keywords: Henry Roth, Mercy of a Rude Stream, stigma, identity

Author: Huaihai Zhang, Lecturer, School of Foreign Languages, Nanchang University, Nanchang, Jiangxi, China.