I. The Features of Chinese American literature:
1.“China Town”as thesetting often emerges itself in Chinese American literature.
China Town is not only the venue of the stories butalso a kind of different life style and culture different from Americanmainstream life. Here people speak Chinese, eat Chinese cuisine and observeChinese customs and traditions.
2. The contents are about the contradictionand conflict between Chinese and American cultures. Compared with Jewishculture, it is very difficult for Chinese culture to be melted into Americanculture. Chinese culture is profound and broad, with a long history andtremendous influence, and the migrants and their offsprings are puzzled attheir identity. Compared with black writers, Chinese American writers areconcerned with cultural clash rather than racial antagonism.
3. Womanwriters became more prestigious and influential. They wrote about the conflictas well the melting of two cultures. And repression of women and prejudice ofrespecting men and despising women are also expressed.
4.Chinese culture exerts direct or indirect influence on Chinese Americanliterature.( Chinese mythology, folklores, classics, and so on ).
II. TheDevelopment of and Introduction to Chinese American writers
1. FrankChin(赵建秀)（1940——）California. (playwright)
《鸡笼中国佬》(The ChickencoopChinese)1971→seekingfather and self –identity,→failure.
泰姆以自己的身份为耻，做奴才
The Year of the Dragon(《龙年》1974)
文氏一家，唐人街的生活, 华人家庭的分崩离析。
(ghetto)“模范少数民族”←→racialdiscrimination and equality.
2.Maxine Hong Kingston(1940——)汤亭亭
The Woman Warrior: Memories of a Childhoodamong Ghosts
Autobiographya)《无名女子》Her aunt jumped into the well after giving birth to ababy while her husband went to America long ago。b )《白虎山学道》花木兰的故事→想象成为女英雄。C）《乡村医生》母亲的故事e）《西宫门外》母亲的妹妹月兰的故事。f）自己保持沉默
汤亭亭勾勒出了一个相互矛盾的中国文化传统，其既压迫妇女，又造就花木兰这样的女勇士。在她的笔下，中国到处是受压迫的鬼魂，在美国则到处是用种族歧视的法案和法律强迫华人隐名埋姓的移民官和警察，其把人边鬼。曲解中国文化和神话，丑化华人男性形象。
China Men（《中国佬》）（1980）→反对种族主义，弘扬族裔历史的快刀，一部华裔男子在美国排华政策迫害下的血泪史（开拓甘蔗园，修铁路…）。
3. Amy Tan (1952-)
The Joy Luck Club(《喜福会》)（1989）
四对母女：吴宿愿，钟林冬，苏安梅和顾映映在美国重组喜福会，而吴宿愿则在抗战中逃到桂林，与另外3个妇女打麻将消磨时间，称为喜福会。
吴晶妹Jing-meiWoo, An mei Hsun(rose), Ying-ying St Clair and Lena
“美国环境”与“中国人的性格”，文化冲突与代沟→自我发现，身份，寻找美国梦，跨文化与种族交流，家庭关系的解体，对自我身份的迷茫.
The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991), TheHusband Secret Senses (1995) Bonesetter’sDaughter (2001)
美国vs中国文化→The conflict, the denial of traditionalChinese culture.
4. David Henry Hwang(1957—)(黄哲伦)
Playwright. FOB《新移民》（1979）→华人同化过程中遇到的问题和困境。
III．A Brief Introduction to The Joy Luck Cluband Amy Tan
1. Amy Tan was born in Oakland, Califonia in 1952. Her father JohnTan moved to
2. The sketch of this novel: This novel comprisesseries of short-story-like vignettes that move back and forth in time andspace, between the lives of four Chinese women and their American – borndaughters in California. It tells four pairs of mother and daughter——Suyuan woo(吴宿愿) and Jing-mei(June)(吴晶妹); An-mei Hsu(苏安梅) and Rose；Ling Dong(钟林冬)and Waverly; Ying-ying St.Clair(顾映映) and Lena. Suyuan Woo was dead when the story begins. →The bitter-sweet mother-daughter relations, fromdifferent angles the mother and daughters treat one another cautiously, playinga game of love and fear, need and rejection. Mother who suffered a lot in Oldchina are ambitions for their daughters, but while they expect them to succeedin
IV．DetailedLearning and Appreciation of the Story
1. An analysis of the writing style
Diction:simple, easy to understand, small words, some broken ungrammatical English fromthe mothers, vivid and expressive a few formal ones →irony
Syntax: simple, nut complicated.
Rhetorical device: p.60, p.73, p.76 (not many)
Tone: a touch of irony, sadness, and sarcasm
Theme: the general meaning, the central and dominatingidea that unifies and controls the total work. Mother’s attempt to change herdaughter into a prodigy and the daughter’s resistance to such changes representa bitter-sweet relationship between mother and daughter and a sharp conflictbetween two generations and two cultures.
2. The structure of the article
PartⅠ(1-3):Background information, high expectations put on the daughter.
PartⅡ (4-76): Many methods are used to prove the daughter’sgenius, but unsuccessful. Sub1 (4-11), a Chinese Shirley temple: sub2 (12-20),harder test and the girl planned to be disobedient;
Sub3 (21-28), learning to play the piano, sub4(29-46), her hatred for learning the piano; sub5 (47-60), her failure in thetalent show, sub6 (61-76) climax
PartⅢ (73-93),a grown-up woman, the clash subsided and they made peace with each other, the epiphany,or revelation.
4. Themother’s American Dream
The core of the Americandream: Popular“ rags-to-riches”stories exemplify the American Dream---the belief thatany individual, no matter how poor, can achieve wealth and fame throughdiligence and virtue.(Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Fort, Morgan…)
5. PartⅠprovides the reader with some background information.It tells about the mother and her hopes for her daughter. This paves the payfor the development of the conflict between the daughter and the mother. Themother is very optimistic about the daughter’s future, and in fact, she israther ambitious for her daughter. Why? (Chinese culture)
6.“I was…holyindignity”
It means Christ child cried with holyindignation when he was lifted from the straw manger. It is humorous. Accordingto the Bible, Jesus Christ did everything with holy dignity, such as preachingand healing the sick. But when he was a newborn baby and when he was lifted outof the straw manger, he cried like other babies, without holy dignity, but withindignity. Yet, because he was the Holy Son of God, his indignity was holy.
6.“In spite of these warningsigns, I wasn’t worried.”
The girl hadso many similarities with the narrator that she should have known what hermother was thinking about; if the Chinese girl could be a Shirley Temple-likeprodigy, why not her own daughter? The mother had the new idea---to make herdaughter learn the piano. The daughter saw those warnings, but she was notworried→(mother’s high expectation)
7.“So ungrateful”
These twowords reflect an important Chinese values concerning the relationship amongparents and children. The parents do everything they can do for their childrenand the children are supposed to feel grateful to their parents. The typicalAmerican idea is that since the parents have brought their kids, they haveobligations for the kids, and so the kids do not have to feel that they ownanything to their parents.
“In other words, for the most part, we hated eachother.” Their behavior is similar to sibling rivalry, which means competitionbetween brothers and sisters for their parents’ attention or love. Althoughthere is sibling rivalry in all cultures, it is more common in Americanfamilies. Because of different family education and family values, in Americanfamilies, every child is led to think he or she is the best. They areencouraged to compete for everything from an early age on. In Chinese families,elder sisters and brothers are told to look after their younger sisters andbrothers. In return, younger sisters and brothers should respect their olderones. In American families, more emphasis is put on individual right andequality than on relations in which the older and the younger siblings havedifferent rules to play.
8.“I looked out… Waverly’s sulky expression”
Pay attentionto the different facial expressions: The mother had a blank face because herfeelings at his moment were mixed. She had high expectations and she wasnervous. She had to hide her feelings. The father yawned, showing he didn’tcare so much as the mother and he was bored by the kids’ activities. AuntieLindo’s stiff-lipped smile revealed that she tried to put on a polite smile butonly succeeded in an awkward, unnatural smile. Obviously, she was afraid thatSuyuan’s daughter’s success might outshine her own daughter. However, Waverly,being a child, failed to hide her unhappy feelings very well.
9.“Only two kinds…Obedient daughter”
Intradition, Chinese are strongly influenced by the relation between parents andchildren. That is, parental authority can not be challenged. The motherstrongly believes it. She thinks that daughters should listen to and obey theirmothers’ orders. She knows that American daughters are not obedient. In fact,she wants her daughter to have a Chinese character in the Americancircumstances.
What changedthe frighteningly strong woman into a silent, stunned and helpless woman like asmall thin leaf blown away? The answer can not be found in this part. In fact,in the novel, the loss of the babies was an unspeakable secret of the motherfor“we never talk about” them. The girl hurtthe mother so deeply that she was powerless to act. The mother has feltlifelong guilty for abandoning the babies. However, at the end, we know thebabies were found after the mother’s death. Mother gave all her love to andplaced all her hopes on her American-born daughter. So when Jingmei said shewould be dead like that, the words were too cruel and unbearable for themother.
10. The implied meaning of the pieces of music.
When thedaughter became a matured woman and her mother was dead, she began toappreciate her mother’s devotion and sacrifice. At this stage, from what thetitles of these two pieces of music suggest, she realized that her childhoodwas made up of two sides. Even though there were unhappy moments, on the wholeit was filled perfect happiness. When she was a little girl, she only saw oneside of her childhood. She couldn’t understand her mother, regarding her mother’shopes and expectations as tormenting pressure that only brought misery to her.So she saw her as a pleading child. The moment she understood her mother’s loveand appreciation of her, she felt perfectly contented.
