Chinese American Women's Pursuit Of Community

Amy Tan(1952-)is a celebrated Chinese American female writer,known as “a teller of Chinese stories”.She employs story-telling narrative technique in her works to reveal conflicts between generations,races and genders in heterogeneous cultures.Domestic and foreign scholars have studied her works from perspective of Chinese cultural elements,mother-daughter relationships,feminism,post-colonialism and so on,but few has explored Tan's community consciousness.As a Chinese American female writer,Tan is confronted with identity crisis of being as the dual other in terms of sex and race.The lack of a sense of belonging results in her construction of discourse power for female community in her works in order to obtain psychological compensation.In the light of theory of community and radical feminism,this thesis analyzes Tan's pursuit of female community in The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement.It further discusses deficiencies of female community that Tan tries to construct by taking account of historical,cultural and social contexts of Tan's era.After a thorough research,this thesis finds “female community” constructed in these two works has its common good of pursuing gender and ethnic equality and employs mother-daughter relationship and sisterhood as its spiritual bonds.By constructing the shared living space of female community,women finally retrieve their subject identities.However,this “female community” has deficiencies.On the one hand,this “female community” hopes to enable women to get rid of men's control completely,which falls snare to essentialism by idealizing women and demonizing men.Instead of eliminating binary opposition of gender in patriarchal society,it leads to another form of gender binary opposition.Certainly,Tan does not really want to build a world absent of men.It is out of rage,depression and desire of subject identity.On the other hand,entrapped in the white ideology,this “female community” excludes Chinese American “fathers” from families to cater to values of mainstream American society.Only by constructing a community with a shared future for human beings where there are harmony,mutual respect and tolerance between the two sexes and people seek common ground while reserving differences,can truly promote the progress of human civilization.The thesis is divided into six chapters.The first chapter begins with an introduction to Tan and her two novels,The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement.Then it reviews domestic and foreign studies of these two works.Besides,it explains the theory of community,the theory of radical feminism and their internal connection to employ them as the theoretical foundation.By delving into classic works of community written by Aristotle,T?nnies and Williams,the core ideas and functions of community are summarized.In addition,this thesis also initiates the origins,arguments and influence of radical feminism to female community constructed in literary works.The second chapter discusses pursuit of gender and ethnic equality as the common good for female community.The third chapter clarifies mother-daughter relationship and sisterhood as the spiritual bonds of female community.The fourth chapter elaborates on the function of “the Joy Luck Club” and“the courtesan houses” as the shared living space of women to protect themselves from patriarchal and ethnic oppression.The fifth chapter explains the entrapment of gender binary opposition and of the white ideology as the deficiencies of female community.The last chapter concludes that Tan's concern about Chinese American women's predicament and her pursuit of female community.This research is significant in that it explores,from a novel perspective,individuals' and group's complex living conditions of Chinese American women in American social context,their pursuit of identities and Tan's longing for and unremitting exploration of female community.