Seeking Identity Between Different Cultures In The Joy Luck Club

By the analysis of the stories between mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan, this thesis tries to study the race identity seeking process of Chinese Americans.The first part, the thesis studies the Asian American and Chinese American literature. And it makes a brief introduction to the Asian and Chinese American culture and the identity seeking history that is represented in Chinese American literary works and the status and contribution of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. After the migration to America, Chinese Americans lost their race identities and themselves in the conflicts of eastern and western cultures.In the second and third parts (chapter one and chapter two), it analyzes the conflicts between Chinese culture and American culture, which are focousing on three parts---the conflicts between two languages, the conflicts between high-context culture and low-context culture and the conflicts between collectivism and individualism. And in the book of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, it analyzes the cause of the conflicts between mothers and daughters and the finl reunification of them.The fourth part (Chapter three),it exemplifies the story of the conflicts between mothers and daughters among these first generation Chinese Americans, introducing the first and second generation's identity seeking process. They struggle in the tremendous differences between eastern and western culture, and lost their own cultures and race identities.In the fifth part (the conclusion), this thesis analyzes the real identity of Chinese Americans, pointing out that we should consider them with a new identity that belongs to neither American nor Chinese.Because of the unique factors of Chinese Americans'identity experiences, the topic of identity seeking will be discussed forever by more people.