Cultural Identity of American Chinese in The Kitchen God's Wife

Abstract

Since the advent of The Joy Luck Club in 1987, Amy Tan's novel has won praise from many readers around the world. The Kitchen God's Wife is the second novel written by American Chinese novelist Amy Tan. 

The body of this thesis is divided into five parts. The first part is the introduction to Amy Tan, Chinese-American literature, and The Kitchen God’s Wife. The second part points out the two conflicts on the heroine in the novel. The third part analyzes the cultural connotation behind conflict resolution. The fourth part points out the cultural identity of the American Chinese as the marginal ethnic group in American society reflected in The Kitchen God’s Wife. The fifth part points out the developing trend of cultural identity of American Chinese and the reasons for this trend.

The Kitchen God’s Wife reflects the dual cultural psychology of the American Chinese. This kind of psychology is the combination of Eastern subconsciousness and Western values. The Kitchen God’s Wife has already initially embodied the cultural identity of American Chinese. Amy Tan and other American Chinese writers show their complex tendencies of dual cultural identity through orientalism and essentialism intertwined with anti-essentialism. Therefore, this paper finds out that the evolutionary trend of the cultural identity of the American Chinese reflected in The Kitchen God's Wife is a change from Monocultural identity to Multicultural identity.

Key words: The Kitchen God’s Wife; American Chinese; Cultural Identity