INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE: THE UNCERTAINTY OF GENRE 1 The Autobiography Camp 2 The Fiction Camp 3 The Chinese American Position 4 Suggestions of Other Genres 5 Kingston's Opinion about the Genre Classification CHAPTER TWO: THE UNCERTAINTY OF IMAGES 1 The Uncertain Ghost Image 2 The Uncertain Character Image 3 The Uncertain Bird Image CHAPTER THREE: THE SEMANTIC UNCERTAINTY 1 Conflicting Semantics 2 Two or More Alternative Versions of One Fact 3 Ambiguous Semantics CHAPTER FOUR: THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES LEADING TO UNCERTAINTY 1 The Combination of Reality and Unreality 2 Talk-story 3 Denarration 4 The Unreliable Narrator 5 Free Indirect Discourse CHAPTER FIVE: THE STEADINESS OF THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE 1 The Chinese-box Narrative Model 2 A Similar Sequence of Narrative Events 3 A Similar Syntagmatic Structure BIBLIOGRAPHY APPENDIX