Coexistence And Communication: On Multicultural Features Of The Joy Luck Club

As a branch of American ethnic literature, Chinese American literature has become thriving in recent decades. Well-known writers, such as Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan pushed Chinese American literature into a new era. Amy Tan (1952-), a best-selling popular novelist, is one of the representatives at the prosperous period of Chinese-American literature. This paper aims to discuss her masterpiece The Joy Luck Club, which gained enthusiastic reviews and remained on the New York Times best-seller list for many months. The novel also won both the National Book Award and the L.A. Times Book Award in 1989. It was a popular success, selling more than four million copies. Thanks to the critical success of the novel, Amy Tan became one of the most famous American writers of Asian ancestry. Sau-ling Cynthis Wong once concluded that "Tan has been chosen to perform the Asian-American spokeswoman/figurehead function once assigned to Maxine Hong Kingston."As one of the second-generation immigrants, who were in the crossroads of Chinese culture and American culture, Amy Tan employs unique artistic approaches to reproduce the life of Chinese-Americans, especially Chinese-American women's history and their status quo, and portrays the contradiction and conflict of four Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters in faith, value, and the attitude to traditions and modernity. Amy Tan does not seem to simply identify with American culture, but she tries to understand how to come to terms with the two cultures. The novel not only demonstrates the conflicts between two generations, cultures and nations, but also reflects the aspirations of overseas Chinese decedents in constructing a beautiful world of harmonious coexistence of diverse cultures.Domestic and overseas scholars have carried out studies of the novel from various aspects, and some of them believe that The Joy Luck Club focuses on the mind courses of two generations in dealing with cultural gaps, some critics believe that the all-well ending of the novel represents the reconciliation of mothers and daughters, and American daughters finally identify with their Chinese culture heritage, and still some scholars analyze the reasons of mother-daughter conflicts from the perspectives of feminism, psycho-analysis and colonialism. The majority of critics believe that the novel can attract western readers mainly because it satisfies the reading expectation of Americans to learn about the culture and customs of foreign lands, which demonstrates the tendency of Orientalism. It is easy to note that most of the critics pay too much attention to accusing Amy Tan of catering to the needs of western readers, but seldom of them notice the signs of cultural communications between China and America, and still less of them connect the novel with multicultural features. Based on a lot of reading and collecting various comments, this thesis aims to confirm that there are some multicultural features in The Joy Luck Club. The novel attracts such a big audience to a great extent owing to the fact that it focuses on different characters growing and developing in multiple cultural environments, and the subject choices as well as narrative strategy also contain the impact of multiple cultures, and thus forming the coexistence and communication of different cultures. As the world pattern changes, the Western Center Theory in cultural study field has been strongly attacked. Besides, the emergence of the colonialism theory also enables multicultural study to become the mainstream discourse in culture study field. American society itself carries forward multicultural traditions, therefore, after World War II ethnic culture gained certain recognition in academic community as well as in actual life, thus forming the situation of integrity between ethnic culture and the United States mainstream culture. As a result, Chinese-American works, either from the aspects of characterization, subject choice or narrative skills, bear dual characteristics. In such a context, it also should be noted that Chinese-American writers have a world vision, instead of confining their perspectives in an inherent model. Therefore, trying to interpret The Joy Luck Club from multicultural perspective can not only provide a new angle for interpreting the text, but also can convey certain practical significance in current situation of globalization. This thesis consists of five parts, and is divided into three chapters with the exception of introduction and conclusion.Chapter One aims to interpret characterization of The Joy Luck Club from multicultural perspective. Daughters of the novel are not only influenced by their mothers, who are carrying forward Chinese culture, but also accept the western culture from an early age. They both act according to traditional Chinese female norms and behaviors and can keep pace with men in career, thus having complex property that combines Chinese and Western. In addition, the description of mothers reflects the multicultural features from another angle. The novel subverts the image of Chinese women in Western culture, which is the stereotype of helpless victim and men's slave, and shows their optimism in face of adversity, their indomitable spirit as well as the independent guidance for their daughters.Chapter Two tries to interpret the subject choice of The Joy Luck Club from multicultural perspective. Amy Tan tells sixteen interwoven stories between Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-raised daughters using a language mixture of Chinese Pinyin and English. As Chinese-Americans, they are Chinese as well as American. The novel absorbs the nourishment of rich Chinese culture, introduces many Chinese folk tales, and adapts Chinese customs creatively. In addition, the introduction of traditional Chinese culture shows the charm of the oriental. What's more, the introduction of Geomancy and Five Elements Theory makes the novel gain more unique artistic attraction. Chinese allusions, myth, tales and customs the novel conveys also subvert the absolute dominant position of western culture.Chapter Three is intended to interpret the narrative strategy of The Joy Luck Club from multicultural perspective. The narrative skill of the novel is the combination of western techniques and traditional Chinese cultural elements. Amy Tan introduces to foreign readers Chinese culture and literature and adopts traditional Chinese narrative skills with some modification in her writing. In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan introduces to western readers talk story, a traditional narrative form of Chinese literature. Combining with multiple points of view, Tan creates her unique narrative skill with the help of talk story, which is compatible to the theme of the novel. The all-well ending of the novel also reveals Chinese emphasis on harmony and unification. Besides, in the novel, the imperfect language used by the characters makes the description more vivid and real. In addition, Pidgin English is frequently used in the novel, neither Chinese nor English, but a combination of the two. Through these narrative techniques, Chinese and American cultures achieve reconciliation, which also shows Tan's pursuit of combining the primes of seemingly contradictory cultures.The great success of The Joy Luck Club symbolizes that Chinese-American literature has gone through a significant turning point, and the success of the writers mainly depends on the fact that their works' characterization, choice of subject and their narrative skills have gone beyond the boundaries of color, gender and class. Due to factors of identity, family, society and culture etc., those Chinese-Americans and their descendants, who have settled in American, always have great attachment to Chinese cultures on one hand, and on the other hand, they display certain affiliation with western cultures and the alienation with the eastern culture. Therefore, the contradiction and conflicts can often be seen from their works. The Joy Luck Club is a new paradigm of literature with mixed characteristics of both Chinese and American. Through the characterization, the choice of subject and the narrative strategies, Amy Tan, in The Joy Luck Club, demonstrates that each culture has its own essence and dross, and there is no culture of ultimate universal significance. During the process of learning and borrowing primes from other cultures, the culture itself becomes enriched and ever-developing. But still, tolerance, communication and understanding are highly required. There are many common essences between different ethnics and cultures, and each culture needs to go beyond their limited boundary and integrate into the common essence of the whole social life of human. Only by doing so can culture be kept in pace with the development of society.