A Study Of The Identity Of Chinese American Women In Amy Tan’s Novels

Amy Tan(1952-)is a famous Chinese-American writer.So far,she has written five novels,three children’s books,an autobiography and a collection of essays.As a female writer with multiple cultural identities,she wrote about the patriarchy persecution suffered by Chinese women,a vulnerable group,before immigrating to China,and the multiple colonization suffered by Chinese women in a foreign land after immigrating to China.She reflected the survival plight of Chinese women surrounded by multiple cultures,and explored how the Eastern and Western cultures evolved from conflict to integration.Especially,the unique narrative perspective and creation theme in Amy Tan’s novels are of great significance not only for us to correctly view the status of Chinese women,but also for us to study post-colonial literature and ethnic diaspora literature.Therefore,this thesis takes Amy Tan’s novels as the research object,and the postcolonial feminist theory as the breakthrough point to analyze the multiple racial and gender oppression suffered by two generations of Chinese women in Amy Tan’s novels,as well as the identity crisis in the “sandwich”cultural environment,and discusses how Chinese women break the silence and realize the life course of identity.It also tries to dig out the deep implication of solving the cultural conflict between East and West through cultural co-birth in Tan’s works in order to provide a certain degree of reference for the academic circle to better understand Tan’s literary creation.The thesis is divided into three parts: Introduction,Text and Conclusion.The text is divided into three chapters:The first chapter mainly studies the multiple racial and gender oppression suffered by the Chinese female group in the United States in Amy Tan’s novels,and clarifies the difficult living situation of the Chinese female group.Postcolonial feminism believes that there is never a single form of oppression,and imperialism and patriarchal ideology are often in collusion with each other,which leads to the silence of women living at the bottom of society.And this state is deeply reflected in the Chinese female group with multiple cultural identities.First of all,as a female writer with third-world blood in her body,Amy Tan,based on her grandmother,mother and her own personal experience,has created the image of a Chinese mother of the immigrant generation and an American daughter of the second immigrant generation in her works.Through the experiences of her characters,Tan exposes the spiritual and physical persecution of the “immigrant generation” mothers by feudal Confucian ethics.Secondly,it discusses the cultural hegemony and language violence suffered by the “immigrant generation” Chinese mothers after they arrived at the other side of the ocean with the “American dream”.Even the daughters of the “second generation of immigrants” who were born and grew up in the United States and speak fluent English are inevitably oppressed by the patriarchy and racism from the western society.This marginalized situation and identity leads to the collective “voice loss” of the Chinese female group.The second chapter studies the identity of Chinese women in Amy Tan’s novels.The first section,starting from the “gaze” theory,discusses the spiritual colonization of the dominant American culture and the visual violence of the white race suffered by the Chinese women in Amy Tan’s novels.The second section uses the identity theory to discuss the identity anxiety of the Chinese female group in Tan’s novels from two aspects: the cultural identity of “hybrid” and the internalization of racism”.In Amy Tan’s novels,the images of Chinese women are demonized,stereotyped and homogenized in the eyes of the colonists’ “other”,and can only be reduced to the object to be expressed.Especially for the daughters of the “second generation of immigrants”,they have been immersed in the mainstream culture of the United States for a long time.For them,their home country is a spiritual home that they cannot go back to.The separation from their home country makes them completely accept American values,but alienate and loathe traditional Chinese culture.Even under the spiritual colonization of the strong American culture,they internalize the prejudice of the west against the East and the East into the criterion of self-definition and self-evaluation.The Chinese daughters try their best to change their own racial characteristics,learn the American lifestyle and living habits,and worship the aesthetic and values of the white race,so as to integrate into the American society and be recognized by the white race.But unfortunately,despite their efforts to renounce their racial identity,they are still marginalized in American society and do not even have a voice in their own families.At the same time,Chinese traditional culture,which they regard as dross,also unknowingly influences the formation of their own character,making them blindly compromise and tolerate in marriage life.The “mixed”identity formed by the collision of American mainstream culture and Chinese traditional culture makes Chinese female groups unable to find a place to settle down and are in a state of homeless drifting,which forms an identity crisis.The third chapter discusses how the Chinese female group in Amy Tan’s novels“voice” for themselves under the oppression of patriarchy and race,and under the situation of self-identity crisis,realize identity and construct subjectivity.First of all,by shaping a group of Chinese women with distinct characteristics and describing the profound heritage of Chinese traditional culture and the current situation of China’s rapid economic development,Amy Tan’s works subverts the theory of Orientalism and breaks the backward and poor image of China in the western imagination and the pornographic,feudal and docile stereotype of Chinese women.It deconstructs the thinking mode of Western centrism and sets up cultural and national confidence for Chinese women to realize their identity.Secondly,writing is a powerful tool for post-colonial feminists to build their own cultural traditions and speak out for marginalized female groups.Tan herself and the Chinese women in her novels seek memories of their homeland and family in writing and writing,and break the silence,speak for themselves and realize their identity by putting traumatic memories into writing.Finally,the paper analyzes the deep meaning contained in Amy Tan’s novels,that is,the Chinese community must identify its own national culture,find its roots through culture,and reach the reconciliation of different cultures,so as to realize identity and complete the construction of self-identity.The epilogue explores the controversial topic of whether Amy Tan’s novels have orientalist tendency,and summarizes her post-colonial feminist observation of Chinese female groups in her novels,her contribution to post-colonial feminist literary criticism and Chinese American literature.And the importance of alleviating immigrants’ cultural identity anxiety and reconstructing their subjectivity in the process of globalization.