Abstract: Second Daughter of the Family and Fifth Chinese Daughter are two Chinese women’s autobiographies in the early twentieth century. Both of the authors grew up in theU.S.However, due to different family backgrounds, they had been brought up to be different persons. This paper discusses the relations among the family traditions, foreign culture and trans-border Subject, enabling us to realize how those elements exert impact on the author’s identity in autobiography writing.

Keywords: Subject; Identity; Chinese American; Women’s Autobiography

Tsun-Jen Cheng is Associate Professor in the Department of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language atMingChuanUniversityand Director of the Biography Society of China. He is the author of A study on Contemporary Biography inTaiwan(2006) and numerous articles in biography studies.