An Analysis Of The Characters’ Cultural Identity In The Bonesetter’s Daughter

Amy Tan is one of the most successful Chinese American women writers in the United States, who became popular in the1990s, and is considered the one who brings Chinese-American literature into the mainstream of American literature. Her novels reflect a better hope that Chinese and American cultures may change from the conflict to final integration.The Bonesetter’s Daughter is her fourth novel, which is said to have the strongest autobiographical features and to be the most profound description of a mother-daughter relationship. It also launched around the contradiction between two generations and how the contradiction is resolved. This novel depicts emphatically the state of existence and cultural psychology of people who were wandering between ancient culture and immigration culture, as well as the life experiences where anxiety and hope, pain and pleasure coexisted they went through as diasporas while choosing the identity between a strong culture and vulnerable culture.The paper is composed of six parts.The first chapter is an introduction to the author’s life and experience, the main content of the novel-The Bonesetter’s Daughter, and the literature review.The second chapter introduces the theories used in the paper, including Stuart Hall’s definition of culture identity, the post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha’s understanding of cultural orientation and identity, and finally Dubois double consciousness theory. They are the theoretical basis, based on which we can better explain the cultural location and identity of the mother and daughter in the double culture environment.The third chapter, the fourthrchapter and the fifth chapter are the main parts in the paper. They use the theories to analyze the cultural identity of the mother and daughter in The Bonesetter’s Daughter. They firstly clarify the mother and daughter’s differences in cultural identity, and then analyze the reflection of their double consciousness and the deviation of cultural identity. Finally, through further theoretical analysis, these chapters focus on the sticking point of the cultural identity of mother-daughter relationship, and illustrate how the mother and daughter reached the proper cultural orientation and cultural integration through mutual reconciliation, and finished searching and reconstruction of their cultural identity.The sixth part is the conclusion part, which pointed out that only by knowing the cultural differences, the confusion and the objective of the struggle of those who live in two cultures, can they have a further understanding of how to correctly define their own position on cultural identityity and finally pursue their self-essence.