From Silence To Articulation

On the publication of her first novel The Joy Luck Club(1989), Amy Tan, the contemporary Chinese American novelist became an instant star in the publishing world, as well as the mainstream literary circle. Two years after her success with the first book, Amy Tan presented The Kitchen God's Wife (1991), which again became a great success among both critics and general readers. Regarding the scanty and limitation of domestic researches on her second book, this thesis is intended to provide some new perspectives in reading and research of this book, mainly about how Tan builds up an access for her characters from silence to full voice, and pioneers new passes for Chinese American writers for self-expression. The Kitchen God's Wife is a retelling of the Chinese folklore from a contemporary feminist point of view, which comprises one of its most prominent artistic features, and one of the recipes that contribute to its storming success as well. The Kitchen God's Wife is a record of women's journey from silence to full voice through the way of storytelling---a performance that is widely considered a female act. In addition to other ingenious writing skills, Amy Tan develops her own brand of narrative strategies, which become the most solid basis for Tan to create an authority of female discourse. Relying on Gerard Genette's theory of metadiegetic narrative and Susan Sniader Lanser's theory of narrative voice, the thesis probes the double-level structure and shift of voice in the novel, as well as the respective functions of the two major characters'voices.