Conflicts, Reconciliation And Harmony

Amy Tan is an immensely popular writer of dazzling talent in the Chinese American literary world. Published in 1989, The Joy Luck Club, her first novel, is widely acclaimed by the general readers and the critics. Amy Tan's writing has earned her star status. Although her parents are Chinese, Tan grows up as an assimilated Asian American. She is aware at an early age of contradictions between her ethnicity and American culture. Tan feels uneasy balancing American lifestyles with more traditional Chinese customs and later expresses a painful awareness about her biculturalism. Many Chinese Americans confront the dilemma of living bi-culturally in a society that insists on a homogeneous identity. The Joy Luck Club, which portrays four first-generation Chinese immigrant women and their fully Americanized daughters living in California, is cross-cultural. In this book, the author vividly presents generational and cultural differences between them. The mothers still have very strong cultural ties to China and want to raise their children in the traditional Chinese way. But the daughters feel that they are trapped in the conflict between traditional Chinese culture and the mainstream American culture. The significance of the novel does not simply lie in that it exposes mother - daughter conflicts, but in its theme of cultural understanding. The daughters, who have a strong prejudice against their mothers and the Chinese culture, later change their attitude and show respect to their mothers and identify themselves with the Chinese culture.This thesis consists of six parts, including four chapters between the introduction and the conclusion.Chapter One examines the retaining of the Chinese culture in the book. The four mothers all live a tragic life before they come to the United States, but they have the courage and intelligence to meet the difficulties and change their fate. Still owing to their strong-willed and persistent minds, the mothers conquer prejudice and discrimination against them in the United States and live better later. They want Americanized daughters but expected them to think like Chinese, but the Americanized daughters fail to live up to their mothers' expectations. However, the mothers never stop putting influence on their American -bom daughters. They believe to make their daughters know them and the Chinese culture.Chapter Two expatiates upon the American cultural infiltration. Born in the United States and brought up in American mainstream culture, the daughters also inevitably hold a prejudice against them and the Chinese culture. They believe that American culture is superior to Chinese culture and American version is always better. The daughters are confused by their Chinese heritage and meet many conflicts and misunderstandings in their failure love affairs. With the help of their mothers, they handle their lives smoothly. It eventually brings the daughters to the conclusion that they must ontologically embrace what they cannot culturally reject—they are just as American as they are Chinese.Chapter Three concentrates on the cultural conflict and reconciliation. The mothers and the daughters have different cultural backgrounds in which the mothers retain the Chinese culture and the daughters are educated in the mainstream American culture. They struggle with troubled and ambiguous relationships in Tan's novels. Throughout the novel, the various mothers and daughters attempt to articulate their own concerns about the Chinese and the American culture and about themselves and their relations. In order to make their daughters know them and the Chinese culture, the mothers have made pain-taking efforts. They seize every opportunity to talk to their daughters about their past experience, demonstrating their courage to challenge the feudal society and they never stop extending maternal love to their daughters. Thanks to their great efforts, their daughters gradually understand them and the Chinese culture. Therefore, an uneasy bridge is erected between mothers and daughters, cultural understanding and blending between the mothers and daughters are achieved. Biculturalism is manifest in the struggle for control between mothers and daughters. The generation that is born in China survives by immigrating to the United States. They have two lives. The first life in China cannot be erased by a geographical relocation. China lives within them. Their Chinese lifestyles are constant complements to their present lives in United States.Chapter Four analyzes the author's writing skills in adapting literary technique to revealing cultural conflicts and coexistence. Tan's technique is relatively rare in literature. The Joy Luck Club utilizes a short story circle to indicate the complicated mother-daughter relationship. The novel is divided into four parts. A short parable prefaces each section. The theme of the parables foreshadows the four main steps among the mother-daughter relationship. Many symbols are used in the book. The title of the novel and mahjong are both metaphors for the competitions of memory disclosed by each of the Chinese club-aunties and their respective Chinese-American daughters.On all accounts, Chinese Americans' lives in the United States in some way are based on their profound Chinese culture. The Chinese have retained a distinctive culture within United States in part because of marginalization by the mainstream society, but also as a consequence of the purposeful preservation of Chinese culture by Chinese immigrants. Tan's novels blend the contemporary concerns of uneasily assimilated Chinese Americans with stories about China by Chinese women. Tan's comprehensive perspective engages bicultural issues on a number of different levels, but the dislocations of living in two cultures lie at the heart of Tan's fiction. Cultural understanding and blending are finally achieved.