Orientalism In Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife

Amy Tan, one of the most famous Chinese American writers, established her position in contemporary literature with her first novel The Joy Luck Club (1989), which has won her both reputation and awards. With the publication of the second novel, The Kitchen God's Wife (1991), she transcends herself again. Different from Amy Tan's other novels, such as The Joy Luck Club, The Hundred Secret Senses (1995) and The Bonesetter's Daughter (2001), which concentrates on the description of mother-daughter situations, The Kitchen God's Wife transfers its focus from mother-daughter relationships to relationships between men and women. She only takes mother-daughter relationships as the exterior framework of the whole novel. Moreover, it is also a novel with typical and vivid Chinese characteristics. The novel's focus is the protagonist's retrospect to her bittersweet personal experience in wartime China, and a great number of traditional Chinese cultural signals are interwoven with most of the episodes. The enthusiastic reception of this novel by the reading public and the academic circle is not only due to its breathtaking and mesmerizing plot but also due to the juxtaposition of eastern culture and western culture. Amy Tan succeeds in satisfying western readers'appetite by telling exotic Chinese stories.The existent study of Amy Tan mainly concentrates on mother-daughter conflict and reconciliation, feminist research, narrative study and cultural study. With the boom of globalization, some scholars have begun to read Amy Tan's novels from postcolonial perspective. However, The Kitchen God's Wife has not been given due critical attention. This thesis makes a tentative study of characterization in The Kitchen God's Wife in the light of Said's Orientalism, thereby, revealing Amy Tan's inseparable Oriental ideology in representing her family history.As a whole, the thesis is composed of three major parts, including introduction, body part and conclusion. Introduction part starts with a brief introduction of Amy Tan and her work The Kitchen God's Wife as well as reviews and comments on the book from both domestic and overseas academic spheres, and it ends with an exposition of feasibility and significance of the employment of Oriental theories in interpreting the text.The main frame interprets the text from three perspectives. Chapter One explores the negative images of Chinese men and traces back to the history of American citizenship. Underneath the gaze of domineering American culture, Chinese men can not escape the destiny of being degenerated. Chapter Two offers a detailed analysis of Chinese women in patriarchal society. Their subordinate status reflects Westerners'purpose of marginalizing women as well as their potential political aim. Chapter Three interprets how Oriental ideology insists its superiority of the West over the East.The concluding part of the thesis makes it clear that the unique Chinese American identity of Amy Tan renders unique perspective. Although her writing materials come from Chinese culture, it is impossible for her to get rid of the influence of Orientalism.