This thesis is composed of five parts:part one gives a simply brief introduction to the structure and content of The Joy Luck Club。 Part two mainly talks about the author and relevant researches on her famous book The Joy Luck Club。 Part three analyzes the difference of the east and west into some aspects:attitudes towards marriage; educational philosophy; characters difference。 Part four explores the reasons for this difference。 Part five a conclusion to the paper。 It aims to reveal the cultural conflicts and integration between the east and west。
2。 Literature Review
2。1 Amy Tan and the work The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan is a popular Chinese American women writer who was born and educated in American。 The inspiration and material of Amy’s novel mostly come from her and her mothers daily life experiences。 The Joy Luck Club is Amy’s first and properly the most famous book。 In 1991, she published her second novel the kitchen God’s Wife which also made her become one of the best-selling book in American。 The Bonesetter’s daughter and The Hundred Secret Senses also get well reserved by American’s main stream readers and literary critics。 The Joy Luck Club shows us the difference between the Chinese immigrant mothers and their daughters。 The story began with the misunderstanding and conflicts because of some small household affairs。
2。2 Relevant researches on The Joy Luck Club文献综述
The Joy Luck Club, published in 1989 which has aroused the interests of both foreign and domestic scholars because of the vivid description and Chinese culture。 There are many relative researches in it and here I will try to concentrate on the representative ones。 Carolyn See issued an article in the Los Angeles Times: “Amazing…The Joy Luck Club is dazzling because of the world it gives us。 The only negative thing I could ever say about this book is that I will never again be able to read it for the first time” (Carolyn 4-9) In 1900, Ling Amy published “Between Words︰Women Writers of Chinese Ancestry” which claimed that “It is the ancient, mysterious, and romantic tone of the strange Eastern which satisfied the western reader’s curiosity。”﹙Amy Ling 138﹚Li Rui issued “The differences of family values between China and America under different cultural background。-Reflection from The Joy Luck Club” and said that “ Americans claims their own will when they choose their spouse, they will not be changed by the surrounding and even their parent’s will。”﹙Li 35﹚Du Qingying published the “Culture Difference between Chinese and Americans in The Joy Luck Club” in 2012 which talked about The Joy Luck Club from the conflicts between language values and philosophy of life。 ﹙Du 38-40﹚But just like everything has two sides, there are still some criticism on Amy and her novel, they think what Amy describe about the china and Chinese culture is not true its just for western people’s curiosity。 Chin Frank is the most famous one he claimed that: “The Joy Luck Club a fake Chinese fairy tale…The fairy tale is not Chinese but white racist。 It is not informed by any Chinese intelligence。”﹙Chin 29﹚There are many researches about Amy Tan and The Joy Luck Club, but it is still easy to find something untaken。 Culture identity is not new, but this thesis is written from the perspective of analysis and comparison of two cultures。