3.3 Collision of Value on the Four Daughters’ Growth 11
3.4 Collision of Belief on the Four Daughters’ Growth 12
4 Analysis of the Four Daughters’ Growth under the Fusions between Chinese and American Cultures in The Joy Luck Club 13
4.1 Fusions of Chinese and American Cultures on Jing-mei Woo’s Growth 13
4.2 Fusions of Chinese and American Cultures on Waverly Jong’s Growth 13
4.3 Fusions of Chinese and American Cultures on Lena St. Clair’s Growth 14
4.4 Fusions of Chinese and American Cultures on Rose Hsu Jordan’s Growth 15
5 Conclusion 16
Bibliography 18
1 Introduction
Tan Enmei (Amy Tan), born on February 19, 1952 in Oakland, California, is regarded as one of the best Chinese-American woman writers of the age. She is the second of three children born to a couple who were immigrants from China. Amy Tan once attended the medical college. Then she received the master’s degree in linguistics. She had an ambivalent relationship with her mother because of their different experiences and different cultural background. In result, their profound conflicts were finally broken out when Amy Tan was sixteen. Amy was in youth rebellion at sixteen and fell in love with a man who was five years older than her. Amy’s mother, Daisy, locked the door, picked up a knife, ran up to Amy and held the knife to her neck for about twenty minutes. Finally, Amy succumbed to her mother and promised to break up with her boyfriend because the will to live triumphed over other feelings. Daisy thought she loves her dear daughter while Amy thought the love Daisy gave her is like the blade point which made her painful. She cannot understand this kind of mother-daughter relationship for a long time. 源:自*751~·论,文'网·www.751com.cn/
Amy Tan started to write novels in her thirty-three years old. Her first novel was The Joy Luck Club. After finishing writing The Joy Luck Club, she wrote The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses and so on. The novel The Joy Luck Club became a best seller since it was published and it was translated into thirty-five languages and was adapted into a commercially successful movie. Besides, it helps to establish Amy Tan’s reputation in literary circles. This novel consists of sixteen related stories about the living experiences of four Chinese-American mother-daughter pairs’. And this book was actually based on the life experiences of Amy Tan’s mother and grandmother’s in honor of her mother and the mother-daughter relationships between her and her mother after her mother’s death.
Over the last several decades, a lot of scholars and experts both at home and abroad have committed themselves to the study of the collision between Chinese culture and American culture and the influence of the two different cultures. A variety of theories have been applied to this research, all of which are promoting to broadening the horizons of scholars and experts and to injecting fresh energy into the influence of the cultural interaction.
There are a great many of literature reviews at home. Xu Xingyan (徐行言, 2004), in his Comparison between Chinese and Western Culture employs the philosophic thinking as basic theory to compare the cultural differences between China and western countries in natural background, cultural spirit, mode of thinking, way of expressing, religion, law, ethics, literature and art and then make a self-communion on the collision and fusion between the two cultures.