A Cultural Analysis Of Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife

Amy Tan, a Chinese American woman writer, has become one of the representatives of Chinese American literature, with her not many but internationally famous works, which are rich in themes, including issues of race, gender, and culture. Tan's works boast her excellent writing skills and enrich American multicultural literature with great Chinese culture in her blood. Basing on her own special experience as an ethnic woman, she shows the cultural conflict and racial discrimination as well as gender inequality, encloses the marginalized position of Chinese American women, and searches for a proper cultural identity for them positively.This thesis is targeted at Amy Tan's second novel, The Kitchen God's Wife, to make a cultural analysis. The so-called cultural analysis means analyzing the author's attitude reflected in this novel towards the two different cultures, namely Chinese culture and American culture, and examining how Amy Tan could establish her particular cultural identity as an ethnic minority woman writer when confronted with the dominant American culture.This thesis is composed of introduction, main body, and conclusion. The introduction mainly discusses the internal and external current situation of researches in The Kitchen God's Wife and illustrates the impetus of the thesis and its practical significance under the background of multiculturalism. In her works, Amy Tan reflects Chinese Americans'dilemma of cultural identity, integrates the cultural resources of the East and the West positively, stressing integration of different cultures, and attempts to establish proper cultural identity which belongs to Chinese Americans, who are in embarrassment, as an ethnic group. Tan's new opinion of the issue of cultural identity provides beneficial enlightenment to cultural communication in global context. Therefore, making cultural analysis of The Kitchen God's Wife is, undoubtedly, of practical significance, which is also the gist of this dissertation.The main body is divided into four chapters, each of which analyzes the text from different perspectives.Chapterâ… emphasizes on Amy Tan's writing background. Amy Tan and her works are put against the background of Chinese American literature history and Edward W.