On The Conflict And Reconciliation Of The Eastern And Western Culture In The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan, a famous Chinese American writer, has become one of the representatives of Chinese American literature. The Joy Luck Club, Tan's debut novel, is a narrative about the conflicts between Chinese mothers and Americanized daughters. The major themes are the conflicts, between the immigrants and Americanized second generation. She pays great attention to the understanding and communication between two generations.The Joy Luck Club stimulates ethnic appreciation while allowing readers to objectify their own situations, making connections between their own lives and the culturally distant lives in Tan's characters. As"the other"in the mainstream, Tan discussed the conflicts and reconciliation between two cultures, starting from description of conflicts between two generations and their marriages.The thesis comprehensively discusses the major themes of"conflict"and"reconciliation"in The Joy Luck Club, explores the reasons for conflict and reconciliation, and completes with the concept of"family"in Eastern culture and Western Culture. In the novel, the common family of mothers and daughters is their mother culture—Chinese traditional culture.Part One introduces Amy Tan's life story, her debut novel The Joy Luck Club, and her unique writing skill.Part Two mainly focuses on the development of Chinese American literature, its present situation and the contribution of female writers.Part Three analyzes the main topic of"conflict"in the novel from two points of viewgenerations and cultures, and explains that with the theory of Intercultural Communication.Part Four researches another topic of the novel—"reconciliation". Two generations of mothers and daughters achieve mutual understanding, two different languages and cultures finally march for reconciliation.Part Five studies"family"as a source for cultural development, and its cultural connotation.Part Six comes to the conclusion that the novel makes an attempt to analyze the motherdaughter relationship by presenting the conflicts, communication and integration between mothers and their daughters and between two cultures, which reflects the attitudes that different nations, races and cultures should take in the age of globalization understanding, communication and trust.