engleski

Chinese American Identity in Amy Tan's Novel The Kitchen God's Wife

This article analyzes the relationships between ethnicity and identity in American multicultural literature from the literary opus of Chinese American author Amy Tan. The relationship between ethnicity and identity is one of the key issues in American society and literature, also because it greatly influences the shaping of American national character and its manifestations in literature. Tan’s Chinese American artistic expressions of ethnic identity are unique and set her apart from other Chinese American authors because she demonstrates the complexity of individual identity and the diversity of perspectives in the Chinese American community. A specific Chinese American literature developed as a result of a particular position of Chinese Americans who are neither assimilated nor isolated in the United States. Tan’s second novel The Kitchen God’s Wife describes the experience of defining and creating identity of the members of the first and second generation of Chinese immigrants to the United States of America. This article shows how Amy Tan stresses the balance between isolation and assimilation as her characters are affected by both cultures and since none of them is an exclusive member of only one civilization.

ethnicity, identity, Chinese, American, daughter

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