| Amy Tan is a well-known Chinese-American writer. Her first novel The JoyLuck Club reveals the author's determined intellectual pursuit of textual constructionof the Chinese-American women's cultural identity. Critical studies at home andabroad tend to study this novel from the perspectives of mother-daughter relationship,Feminism, Orientalism, and so on. However, few researches systematically tackle theissue of Chinese-American women's cultural identity from the perspective of textualconstruction and the dynamic process of identity formation. This thesis endeavors tomake an in-depth analysis of the parallel construction of Chinese-American women'scultural identity through the structural discourse as well as the content of the storyfrom the perspective of dynamic identity building. By elaborating the narrativestructure and narrative strategies, Chinese culture sign system, kinship and discussingtheir relationship with ethnic affliation, this thesis attempts to reveal that the processof novel construction is the process of the author's Chinese-American identityconstruction, which also reveals the author's viewpoint and interpretation of culturalidentity. Finally this thesis draws the conclusion that Amy Tan envisions in herliterary text a world of harmony between different cultures.The thesis falls into three parts: the introduction, the body plus the conclusion.The introduction offers a general survey of Amy Tan's life experience, highlights thesignificances and research questions of this study, while simultaneously examiningthe main theoretical perspectives adopted in this thesis. The body is made up of fourchapters. Chapter One conducts a general survey of critical studies at home andabroad. Chapter Two attempts to strike a link between narrative structure of The JoyLuck Club and the theme of identity seeking by illustrating the narrative technique ofstorytelling, the elements of storylines, time and space, as well as different narrators.Chapter Three is intended to explore Amy Tan's textual construction of the firstgeneration's ethnic identity and gender identity. Chapter Four probes the changingprocess of the second generation's identity formation, pointing out that the second generation's identity tends to be influenced by American education, Americanfriendship, and interracial marriage. Finally this chapter exhibits the changing processof the second generation's identity formation through the development and change ofthe mother-daughter relationship in The Joy Luck Club. The conclusion part is a briefoverview and summary of the main research results. |
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