Amy Tan, Vindicator Of The Mainstream American Culture

Amy Tan is one of the most representative female Chinese American writers in contemporary American literary world. Her first novel The Joy Luck Club, which was published in 1989 and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for nine months, has drawn much attention from mainstream critics and readers at home as well as abroad. The Joy Luck Club contains sixteen interwoven stories about the conflicts between Chinese immigrant mothers and their America-born daughters.This thesis is an attempt at interpreting The Joy Luck Club from the perspective of Orientalism through analyzing the distorted description of Chinese people and Chinese traditional culture, the mothers'and the daughters'pursuit of American mainstream culture, and the rejection of mainstream American culture to the mothers and daughters so as to demonstrate that Amy Tan, as Chinese American, stands for the position of the Americans and vindicates the mainstream American culture, by drawing the conclusion that under the surface of the harmonious coexistence of the Chinese culture and the mainstream American culture is the withdrawal of the Chinese culture.This thesis is composed of an introduction, three chapters and a conclusion. It mainly analyzes Said, Orientalism and how the Chinese people as well as traditional Chinese culture are orientalized in The Joy Luck Club; the mothers'voluntary choice of America as their haven and the daughters'efforts to assimilate into the mainstream white society; and the rejection of mainstream American culture to the Chinese immigrants. Through the unreal description of traditional Chinese culture and the contrast between the acknowledgement of the Chinese Americans to the American culture and the unacknowledged attitude of the mainstream American culture towards the Chinese Americans, the author tries to demonstrate that Amy Tan, as the Chinese American, totally stands for the position of the mainstream American culture and thinks it much superior to the Chinese culture, which is the restatement of her vindicator's role of the mainstream American culture.