A Study Of Chinese American Women’s Trauma In The Joy Luck Club From Postcolonial Feminist Perspective

Amy Tan, who has made great contributions to Chinese American literature, isone of the most remarkable Chinese American women writers in contemporaryAmerican literary world. After the publication of her masterpiece The Joy Luck Club,she has drawn a lot of attention from both scholars and common readers. In a way, itis the popularity of the novel that paves the way for her success. Based on herpersonal experience of marginalized woman, Amy Tan tells readers a touching storyinvolving four pairs of daughters and mothers with sincere emotions and superbwriting skill in the novel.Currently, the research about The Joy Luck Club mainly focuses on“mother-daughter relation”,“cultural conflict”, and “feminism”. Relatively, fewresearch on the “trauma theme” has been carried on so far. Hence, based on theprevious research achievements, this thesis tries to explore the trauma of ChineseAmerican women in the novel from the perspective of postcolonial feminism.According to postcolonial feminism, women from the third world have long beenoppressed doubly. On the one hand, they have to endure the torment of racialdiscrimination. On the other hand, they suffer from sexual discrimination. To someextent, they are constructed to be “double-marginalized other”. The loss of self is theorigin of their trauma and aphasia is the symptom of their trauma. In order to workthrough the trauma, they have to reconstruct their own cultural identity.This thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter One is about the introduction tothe writer Amy Tan, her book The Joy Luck Club, the writing background as well as theoretical basis postcolonial feminist criticism. Chapter Two dwells on what theexact trauma of Chinese American women is and how the trauma affects their lives.Chapter Three explores how the Chinese American women try to work through theirtrauma. The last chapter is a conclusion of the whole thesis.