The Analysis Of Saving Fish From Drowning From Postcolonialism

Amy Tan is a very popular Chinese American writer in contemporary American literary circle except for Tang Tingting. She is good at describing Chinese American family life, and The Joy Lucy Club establishes her literary position. Saving Fish from Drowning is Amy Tan’s latest novel published in October,2005, which creates another miracle in her writing career. As the representative of second Chinese American immigrant, Amy is familiar with the eastern culture and the western culture, so this life experience endows her special point of view to think about cultural conflicts. The new novel’s writing style is totally different from her other novels and it tells us a story about Chinese American immigrant Chen Bibi with a group of rich western tourists travels in the eastern world, then all of them find their own identity positions.This thesis will use Said’s "the other" and Homi Bhabha’s "the third space" to analyze the novel’s thematic meaning.This thesis will be divided into four parts. The first part is the introduction. It introduces Amy’s profile, the background of Burmese politics, economy and religion, the current researches of Chinese American literature. And it puts forward several concerned questions: what serious effects have been brought to the colonized people? How do eastern immigrants face maternal culture and western culture? And how can they find the suitable identity position? How should the westerners treat the eastern culture? The second part is to introduce the concept of "the other" by Said and "the third space" by Homi Bhabha. In the third part, firstly it uses Said’s "the other" to analyze the miserable fate of the Karens and their final destruction. The destruction of Karens symbolizes that destruction is the fate of "the other" who completely obey the suzerain culture. Then, how to get rid of the fate and where find the suitable cultural identity? This thesis uses Homi Bhabha’s "the third space" to analyze the character of Chen Bibi and she finally finds her cultural identity. Even though she is successful in America, the success doesn’t make her a complete American. In order to find her own cultural identity, she arranges a trip to the East. It is, in fact, a spiritual trip. Through the trip, she understands that as an immigrant, it is not a good choice to completely hug the western culture; the best choice is to form a completely new immigrant culture. This trip also makes cultural colonists realize that western culture is not superior to eastern culture, and the two cultures should respect mutually. The forth part is conclusion. It makes a conclusion that the cultural invasion in colonial period has a serious and profound effect on the colonized. It also makes colonists an arrogant cultural group. The exchange of two cultures makes them realize the incompleteness of their own culture. The exchange also starts their search for and discovery of their own cultural identity.