The Transcending Cultural Consciousness And The Selection Of Narrative In "Saving Fish From Drowning"

Amy Tan is one of the most popular Chinese American writers in the literary world ofAmerica.Since Maxine Hong Kingston started a boom of Chinese American literary,Amy Tanhas brought the attention to Chinese American literary to a new level. Since she released herfirst work, The Joy Luck Club, with great success in1989, Amy tan has published followingthree works, namely The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991), The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), TheBonesetter’s Daughter (2001). The four works all use the Chinese family stories as thecreation material, which exhibit the spiritual confusion to Chinese culture in the United States.In2005, Amy Tan published her transformation work Saving Fish from Drowning, differentwith the first four works, in this work Amy Tan didn’t use the Chinese American immigrantfamily and the contradictory story between mother and daughter as the topic any more,instead she realized the pursuit of cultural equality and the significance of cultural exchangefrom a global cultural vision through a cultural trip to China and Burma of12Americantourists.Based on the narratological theory,this paper compares the Saving Fish from Drowningwith the first4works of Amy Tan, of which The Joy Luck Club as a representative, analyzesthe culture value transformation in Amy Tan’s work from the content and narrative skillsrespectively. Different from the first4works, of which described the cultural identity andexclusion problems that cause by marginalization of ethnic culture. Saving Fish fromDrowning showed a positive attitude towards their ethnic culture. The theme of this worksteps out of the family story narrative mode, explores the multicultural, cultural relativism,cultural equality and cultural development and exchange problems under the background ofglobalization.