Memory, Imagination And Reality

Amy Tan, a contemporary Chinese-American woman writer, has written four main fictions, including The Joy Luck Club (1989), The Kitchen God's Wife (1991), The Hundred Secret Senses (1995) and The Bonesetter's Daughter (2001). In her fictions, Tan depicts mother-daughter relationships, a tradition originated by another Chinese-American woman writer, Maxine Hong Kinston, to such a great extent that no one surpasses her up to now. Her success in contemporary American literary circle has been studied as a"cultural phenomenon"by many scholars and critics.Reading through her fictions, we can find that Tan interweaves lots of materials from memory, imagination and reality, and adopts an indirect strategy in fiction-writing. First, she describes the"China"in memory with an Orientalist view. Depicting traditional Chinese family and marriage philosophy, traditional Chinese customs and diets, and modern China history, Tan attracts the American/western readers'attention and satisfies their cultural and psychological needs. However, Tan's Chinese culture writing serves her writing intentions. Describing the"China"in memory is only a prelude to her next step----subverting the American Orientalist discourse and breaking the stereotypes of Chinese women. Secondly, with an incredible imagination, Tan retells and replants some Chinese fairy tales and myths, and exploits Chinese superstitions to re-create images for Chinese women, which subverts the understandings by the mainstream culture towards Chinese women. Chinese women are not the"other"in America, namely, the two stereotypes held by the mainstream culture: the evil"Dragon Lady"and the shy"Lotus Blossoms". Just like those European immigrants, Chinese-American women are also Americans with strong emotions and definite dreams in the same multi-cultural society. Lastly, Tan focuses on the American reality and explores emotions between mothers and daughters, between sisters, and between husbands and wives, and explores identity establishment. By this indirect strategy, Tan writes American fiction and approaches the center of the mainstream culture. To sum up, Tan's strategy in fiction-writing serves her intentions of writing American fiction and establishing the American...