Negotiating Identity A Postcolonialist Study Of Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club

The publication of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club has arroused a critical debateamong critics and reviewers on the clashes of cultural difference. The novel depictsthe issue of clash between the Chinese and American cultures and the intrinsicdifferences are inscribed on the bodies of these two cultures.As a member of the Chinese-American second generation, Amy Tan livesbetween the spaces of Chinese culture and American culture. At school she iscultivated by American culture while being raised in a traditional Chinese home.Cultural difference, which is always in the process of negotiation, inevitably locatesAmy Tan in the interstitial space of cultural communication, which is referred to as"the third space" by Homi K. Bhabha. It is this "third space" that splits her doubleidentity of being a Chinese-American.Her novel The Joy Luck Club reflects on the diasporic experiences and conflictsbetween the Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters as the main plot.Amy Tan portrays the diasporic construction of their cultural identities in the 'thirdspace' of cultural communication. Following postcolonial critical discourses, thewriter of this thesis believes that the minorities construct their identities and speak forthemselves in the third space where cultural differences negotiate. In the case of TheJoy Luck Club, the diasporic, that is, the Chinese mothers and American daughters,also negotiate their cultural identity in the same "third space" between Chinese cultureand American culture. In the thesis, postcolonial critical discourses will be applied tothe analysis of the cultural identities of the diasporic in The Joy Luck Club, for thepostcolonial theories can help the minorities to enunciate their voices and reconstructtheir cultural identities. This thesis contains 6 chapters: Chapter 1 gives an introduction to this thesis.Chapter 2 introduces Amy Tan, her novel The Joy Luck Club as well as Bhabha'spostcolonial key concepts that will be applied to the novel. Chapter 3 elaborates onthe writing techniques and the narrative structure of the novel in terms of Bhabha'spoints of"interstitial space". Chapter 4 explores the identity of the diasporic through adiscussion of the stereotype of the Other. Chapter 5 is mainly devoted to the analysisof the diasporic identity constructed in the third space. The conclusion will beprovided in Chapter 6.