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4.1 Women’s Loss of Self in the Traditional Chinese Culture 15
4.2 The Reconstruction of Chinese-American Female Self 16
5 Conclusion 17
5.1 The Cultural Inspiration of The Joy Luck Club 18
5.2 The Implication the Present Study 19
Bibliography 20
1 Introduction
The 21st century is a drastically developed century both in information and transportation technology, which increases frequent cross-cultural communications among various countries. However, according to the basis of cross-cultural communication research, it is a very complex and confusing process to communicate and understand people from different cultural background.
Female culture, as the indispensable part in the comparison of Chinese and western culture has rouse increasing attention in the study of cross-cultural and intercultural communications since the emergence of women’s movement and feminism theories.
Amy Tan is one of the representative female Chinese American writers in the late 20th century. The Joy Luck Club, her first novel, is a masterpiece which is written mainly in the perspective of feminism. It has gained enthusiastic reviews after it is published in 1989, remaining on the New York Times best-seller list for nine months long. In 1993, it is adapted into a film with the same name and has a far-reaching effect on bringing the Chinese American culture to wide readers and more importantly on the study of cross-cultural communications between the two countries.
The Joy Luck Club involves four immigrant families and two generations and describes life experiences and psychological development of both China born American mothers and America born American daughters. With its popularity, this novel has been analyzed by many fields of scholars and writers both Chinese and western. According to the data of CNKI, more than 30 papers focus on the study of this novel, which in part attach great importance to mother-daughter relationship and the Chinese-American cultural confliction and compatibility. Critics try to discuss the different life experiences of the mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club, which reflect different social background, different culture background and emotions of the two generations. Because of these, they hurt each other even though they love each other so much. The existing materials related to the work The Joy Luck Club are obviously proving that it is a feminist work, which leads to many articles and thesis be specific in the perspective of feminism, rather than in the aspect of cross-culture comparison. Actually, this work is not only about women's rebellion and self-identify, but also reflects a value deconstruction of the Chinese and Western female culture.
This dissertation aims to annotate the cultural values of female in the two different countries. Female values of the two countries in different generations that are reflected from the masterpiece are to be analyzed under the guidance of cross-cultural communication theories and feminism theories.
2 Literature Review
The thesis will analyze different female values on Chinese and American cultures in The Joy Luck Club. Therefore, some relevant theories should be described as before. This chapter will have a literature review on the theories used in this thesis, which are feminism theory and Hofstede’s cultural dimensions.
2.1 A Review on The Joy Luck Club
As the first and most successful work of Amy tan, The Joy Luck Club has brought her great success and reputation since it was published. It was enthusiastically received by critics not only in America but also in other countries and the public. This novel has been translated into at least twenty languages. It was also selected as a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. As Amy tan’s an autobiographical work, The Joy Luck Club is composed of sixteen interlocking stories about conflicts between four Chinese immigrant mothers, An-Mei Hsu, Yingying St. Clair, Suyun Woo, and Linda Jong, and their four American-born daughters, Rose Hsu Jordan, Lena St. Clair, Jing-Mei “June” woo and Waverly Jong. This novel is composed of four parts, each of which includes four separate sections, with two sections talking stories about mothers and two stories about their America-born daughters. In 1949, the four immigrants met at the first Chinese Baptist church in San Francisco and then agreed to play the Chinese Mahjong and have dinner made by them and make investments as a weekly gathering. They started to set up a club known as “the joy luck club”. The four members soon became good friends for their similarity on life experiences in china and also common wishes in America, which led the club last for over thirty years long.