The Doctrine Of The Mean And The Conflicts And Acculturation In The Woman Warrior And The Joy Luck Club

In the past thirty years, Chinese American literature has gained growing attention through the endeavor of the Chinese American writers, of whom Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan respectively established their fame as successful Chinese American writers for their first novels The Woman Warrior and The Joy Luck Club. This paper first gives a brief introduction to the two authors and their two novels, and then presents the history of Chinese immigrants in the United States, where Chinese Americans have remained in marginal position. It is indeed praiseworthy that the Chinese American writers have achieved the amazing success in such an untoward situation. Their success did not come in an easy way. The parents-children relationship is a common theme in the Chinese American literary works. Through this theme of two-generation relationship, the Chinese American writers actually exhibit the cross-cultural dilemma in which they are caught. The mother-daughter relationship characterized by mother-daughter conflict is a major theme in the two books. The mother-daughter conflict is none but the superficial phenomenon of the cultural conflict. In other words, the cultural conflict usually emerges in the form of the mother-daughter conflict. Therefore, by analyzing the mother-daughter conflict we can disclose the cultural conflict hidden behind the mother-daughter relationship. The cultural conflict inevitably brings the Chinese Americans, particularly the second-generation Chinese Americans to the between-worlds situation. After giving an analysis of the two worlds in the two books, this thesis attempts from the perspective of the doctrine of the mean to examine how Chinese Americans mediate between the two worlds. The conclusion drawn from the thesis is: positioned as a minority in the predicament between the two worlds of Chinese (east) and America (west), the second generation Chinese Americans, including Kingston and Tan, will have to mediate the inevitable cultural conflicts through mutual accommodation and understanding. By their effort to achieve balance and harmony they can finally transform west-east conflict to acculturation. That is exactly the principle of the golden mean which advocates "harmony, in spite of differences."The doctrine of the mean will no doubt be the best way for the Chinese Americans to deal with the between-worlds situation in a multicultural context.