Ethnic Identity Construction In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club is a prestigious semi-autobiographical novel by Americanwriter of Chinese descent, Amy Tan. From the perspective of interculturalcommunication, this novel reveals the conflicts as well as integrations between theimmigrant mothers, who are on behalf of traditional Chinese culture, and theirAmerican-born daughters representing American mainstream culture. Both themothers and daughters are, to various degrees, in bewilderment when they areadapting to the two cultures. Through communication and conflicts, they bothgradually learn to construct their unique culture identities, especially their ethnicidentity.This thesis employs Professor Sian Jones Practice Theory of ethnic identityconstruction, which regards that ethnic identity is not only restraint by one‘s origins,but also are closely related with the sociocultural environment that people live in.From this perspective, adopting close text analysis, this thesis takes the factors ofbiology as well as social culture into consideration, and makes a detailed analysis ofthe ethnic identity construction of the mothers and the daughters in The Joy Luck Clubrespectively.The immigrant mothers were born and lived in China until their early adulthood,are deeply immersed in traditional Chinese cultures and have already formulated arelatively stable ethnic identity. After their immigration to the United States, they onthe one hand try their best to maintain their original ethnic identity; while on the other,they have to adjust themselves to assume―double faces‖for the sake of survival in analien sociocultural environment. Nevertheless, behind their―double faces‖masks,these immigrant mothers still regard themselves as Chinese people who are living inthe United States. For their American-born and–bred daughters, they are profoundlyinfluenced by two distinct cultures—American culture outside home and traditionalChinese culture at home. They are constantly in a state of questing and negotiatingtheir real ethnic identity. After a visit to China by one of their representatives, these daughters finally come to terms with their true ethnic identities, revealing them asAmericans of Chinese descents.