1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述）

Sarah Pekkanen is considered as America's most popular female writer with her easy and powerful writing as well as a clear-cut rhythm. Known as urban female mind-healing tutor, she can, on all occasions, describe the true disposition in the warmest way. In most of her famous novels, the writer has been discussing how women pursue happiness in the cites where they work hard. And the contents are closely related to such popular vocabularies as girlfriend, inferiority, depression, derailment, happiness and other words in contemporary society. Exposed to unprecedented life stress, modern urban women written by Sarah Pekkanen experience the psychological anxiety, eager for a warm embrace but failing in vain. Ultimately, these women realize that to be truly happy, they could only learn to love themselves, abandon the "self-centered" concept, and know how to cherish what they have already possessed. As for her writing style, Sarah Pekkanen is expert in utilizing language flexibly, in particular, expressing ideas with easy and exquisite words and bright and simple rhythm.

The opposite of Me, together with These Girls and Skipping a Beat, is Sarah Pekkanen’s most prominent masterpiece in shaping urban female figures. Hence, there are a number of researches and reviews of these three novels respectively, especially the first published one, The Opposite of Me. For instance, Courtney Webb, a former librarian and reviewer for Charlotte Mecklenburg County Public Library Reader’s Club and Book Hive: A Guide to Children’s Literature and Books, analyzed the relationship of siblings, as well as the sibling rivalry and identity. She denoted the question Sarah Pekkanen dared to ask: Which came first: the personality traits or the labels attached to them? What Courtney Webb wrote is thought-provoking and hits the nail on the head. In Lv Yi and Yu Bing’s research paper, they gave a comprehensive analysis to The Opposite of Me. They focused on the dissection of the twin’s growth process where they experienced a career change, harvested a happy love. The two could eventually open their hearts to each other and unlock their longstanding knot courageously-they held a contradictory feeling of love and jealousy towards each other. And in her dissertation, Li Tingting explored Lindsey’s distorted identities in sisterhood, career and love under inflated persona as well as her self-realization in these three aspects, which is highly relevant to my paper. All of these materials are valuable references for my paper. However, the self-identity pursuit of Lindsey, which is the focus of this paper, is rarely done before. Therefore, the paper will consult bibliographies of The Opposite of Me and other books of Sarah Pekkanen related to urban female images. To achieve better analysis of the different stages of Lindsey’s self-identity pursuit, this paper will also make reference to some other articles involving the self-identity reconstruction for women like Anna’s Pursuit of Self - identity in The Golden Note written by Wang Xingxing and Sula’s Resistance and Pursuit-The Self-identity Reconstruction for Black Women in Toni Morrison’s Sula.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

This paper lays emphasis on the pursuit of identity of Lindsey, the protagonist in the novel The Opposite of Me, and the general points will be the following: Firstly, the paper will give a brief introduction to the author and her works. In this part, the literary status of Sarah Pekkanen and his representative works will be included. Besides, the author’s favorite subjects and writing styles will be shown. Although this writer does not live during early period, there is also something remarkable to discuss about her distinctive styles. Secondly, this paper will refer to researches on this book home and abroad. In this part, different stages of the identity-pursuit of Lindsey as well as the changes will be listed and analyzed one by one after consulting related information. Finally, it will move to the conclusion part in which the whole paper will be summarized and its significance be presented.

Since relative researches and studies of different stages of the identity-pursuit of Lindsey are limited, the paper will consult some other articles involving the self-identity reconstruction for women like Anna’s Pursuit of Self - identity in The Golden Note written by Wang Xingxing and Sula’s Resistance and Pursuit--The Self-identity Reconstruction for Black Women in Toni Morrison’s Sula as well. Through learning from and improving the analysis methods adopted by correspondingly authoritative people, this paper plans to dissect different stages of Lindsey’s self-identity pursuit comprehensively in detail.

3. 研究计划与安排

before 26th, december settlement of the title

before 25th, february submission of the outline

before 25th, april submission of the first draft

4. 参考文献（12篇以上）

[1] lei zhang. sula’s resistance and pursuit-the self-identity reconstruction for black women in toni morrison’s sula[a]. proceedings of 2015 4th international conference on social sciences and society(icsss 2015 v70) [c], 2015.

[2] pekkanen, sarah. the best of us[m]. washington: washington square press, 2013.

[3] pekkanen, sarah. the opposite of me[m]. washington: washington square press, 2010.