小说《喜福会》中的文化认同现象 英语专业毕业论文

论 文 专 用 纸. . The Phenomenon of Cultural Identity inThe Joy Luck ClubAuthor: CHEN WeiSupervisor: LI Zhi-ling, Professor(College of foreign Language, Shandong Agricultural University, Taian 271018) Abstract: The Joy Luck Club is written by a Chinese-American writer, Amy Tan. And this story is related with immigrants and their family. Most of the foreign and domestic comments on this novel focus on the relationship between immigrant mothers and their American-raised daughters, and the challenges of cultural translation. They pay little attention to the dual identity of immigrants, which is very crucial to the life and fate of the characters. Here I will refer to the two meanings of the word “identity”: one is “who somebody is” which is the most common meaning; and the other one is “exact likeness or sameness” which is the meaning in the norm “cultural identity”. The theme of the paper below is cultural identity, and we will first have a look at its manifestation in each of the characters in the story. Then, I will focus on the phenomenon of cultural identity faced by the whole world. With the rapid advance of globalization and constant mobility around the world, the crisis of cultural identity becomes a serious question. Who am I? This simplest question has become a most confusing one for todays people especially for the immigrants. And the last part is the cultural identity in China. The crisis of cultural identity is not fierce floods and savage beasts. And we should take an active attitude towards it. How to seek the best balance point between two different cultures is what we should learn from this story. Key Words: identity; culture; immigrants; belonging; crisis 小说喜福会中的文化认同现象摘要：喜福会由美籍华人作家谭恩美所著，故事是有关移民和她们的家庭的。国内外对此书的评论大都集中在移民母亲和她们在美国长大的女儿之间的关系，和对文化翻译的挑战上，却忽略了作为移民来说他身上的双重身份，而这一点对小说人物的生活和命运是极其关键的。这里我将涉及到“identity”这个词的两个含义：一个是“身份”，这是最经常用到的；另一个是“相同性，一致性”，这个就是它在名词“文化认同”里的意思。以下论文的主题是文化认同，我们先来看一下它在小说中各个人物身上的表现。然后我会重点介绍全世界共同面临的文化认同现象。随着全球化的推进和世界范围内的人口流动，文化认同的危机已经成为一个严峻的话题。我装订线. . . 第 1 页 论 文 专 用 纸. . 是谁？这个无比简单的问题现在变成最让人困扰的难题，尤其对于移民来说。最后一部分是文化认同在中国的表现。文化认同危机不是洪水猛兽，我们应当以积极的态度去面对它。怎样在两种不同的文化之间寻找最佳平衡点是我们应该从小说中学习的。关键词：身份/认同; 文化; 移民; 归属感; 危机1. IntroductionThe Joy Luck Club tells us a bittersweet story about the conflict and love between four Chinese immigrant mothers Suyuan Woo, Anmei Hsu, Lindo Jong and Yingying St. Clair, and their American-raised daughters Jingmei Woo, Rose Hsu, Waverly Jong and Lina St. Clair. The book hinges on Jingmeis trip to China to meet her half-sisters, twins Chwun Yu and Chwun Hwa. There are four sections in the novel, each of which contains four separate narratives. In the first four stories of the book, the mothers, speaking in turn, recall with astonishing clarity their relationship with their own mothers, and they worry that their daughters recollections of them will never possess the same intensity. In the second section, these daughtersJingmei, Waverly, Rose and Linarelate their recollections of their childhood relationships with their mothers. The great lucidity and force with which they tell their stories proves their mothers fears at least partially unfounded. In the third group of stories, the four daughters narrate their adult dilemmastroubles in marriage and with their careers. Although they believe that their mothers antiquated ideas do not pertain to their very American lifestyles, their search for solutions inevitably brings them back to their relationships with the older generation. In the final group of story, the mothers struggle to offer solutions and support to their daughters, which itself turns out to be a process in which they learn more about themselves. At some point in the novel, each of the major characters expresses anxiety over the inability to reconcile her Chinese heritage with her American surroundings. Indeed, this reconciliation is the very aim of Jingmeis journey to China. Jingmeis experience in China at the end of the novel certainly seems to support the possibility of a richly mixed identity rather than an identity of warring opposition. Her journey brings hope to the other members of the Joy Luck Club that they too can reconcile the oppositions in their lives between past and present, between Chinese and American cultures, and between different generations. 2. The manifestation of cultural identity in each character2.1 Cultural identity of the mothersWhen Chinese immigrant mothers enter the United States of America, it is evident from the start that they are in a world far different from their homeland. Face to face with a dominant culture that often acts and thinks in ways contrary to their previous lives, mothers are on a difficult path of attempting to become an American. They cannot help nostalgically looking back at China longing for a 装订线. . . 第 2 页论 文 专 用 纸. . simpler life, but in the mean time, looking at the United States as a magic land of opportunity and freedom. They realized that this is a land that did not know in China. And after all, this is exactly why they come to America. They want to provide their daughters a well-off life as well as freedom and others respect that they have never experienced in China before. But the traditional Chinese values in the mothers of filial obedience, criticism-enveloped expressions of love, and the concealment of excessive emotions all clash with the daughters “American” ideas about autonomy, freedom of speech, and self-esteem. Thus, they all struggle to find their own cultural identity. 2.1.1 Suyuan WooSuyuan Woo is a strong and willful woman who refuses to focus on her hardships. Instead, she struggles to create happiness and success where she finds it lacking. It is with this mentality that she founds the original Joy Luck Club while awaiting the Japanese invasion of China in Kweilin. “We search our conscience and wed rather welcome death happily than await doomsday pessimistically, so whats wrong with it?”(Amy Tan, 1989: P10). However, her power of will causes problems when she educates her daughter Jingmei. She believes that Jingmei can be a child prodigy if only she can locate her talent and nurture it well enough. The immense energy that Suyuan devotes to the search for Jingmeis “inner prodigy”cleaning for her piano teacher, saving up for a used pianodemonstrates that her motivations probably lie deeper than the promise of bragging rights at church each Sunday. It is Suyuans incessant nagging and inflated expectations that leads to a deep resentment in Jingmei. We can see that Suyuan is really a typical Chinese mother: fierce love for her daughter, often expressed as criticism; always comparing her own daughter with other children; a distress at her daughters desire to shake off her Chinese identity in favor of an American one; and a fear that she may be alienated from her daughter either because her own actions or because of their divergent ages and cultural upbringings. 2.1.2 Lindo JongLindo perhaps experienced the largest crisis of cultural identity of among characters. Even while a young girl in China, Lindo showed that she did not completely agree with Chinese custom. She agonized over how to extricate herself from a miserable marriage without dishonoring her parents promise to her husbands family. While her concern about her parents shows that Lindo did not wish to openly rebel against her tradition, she made a secret promise to herself to remain true to her own desires. This promise shows the value she places on autonomy and personal happiness which are two qualities that Lindo associates withAmerican culture. She named her daughter Waverly, after the street they lived on, to let her know that America, San Francisco in particular, was where she belonged. She knew that by naming her daughter after their street, she was taking the first step in making her wholly American, and thus alienating her daughter from herself. She regrets having given Waverly both American circumstances and Chinese character, stating that the two can never successfully combine. “For a long time, I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and 装订线. . . 第 3 页论 文 专 用 纸. . Chinese character. How could I know thee two things do not mix? I taught my daughter how American circumstances work. If you are born poor here, its no lasting shame, because you can try to get a scholarship first. In American, nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you. She learned these things very quickly, but I couldnt teach her about Chinese character: How to obey your parents; Listen what your mother says; How not to show your own thoughts, to put your feeing behind your face so you can take advantage of hidden opportunities; Why Chinese thinking is bestShe dose not listen to this at all! When I am preaching to her earnestly and maternally, she just chew gum continually and then blow a bubble bigger than her cheeks.”(Amy Tan, 1989: P250). At the same time, however, she recognizes her own American characteristics and knows that she is no longer “fully Chinese”. During her recent visit to China, people recognize her as a tourist. Distressed by this, Lindo wonders what she has lost by the alteration. She has always believed in her ability to shift between her true self and her public self, but she begins to wonder whether her true self is, in fact, her American one. “I look at my daughter and I through the mirror, and think of the ways I conduct myself in society. I really cannot figure out which are Chinese ways and which are American ones. Anyway I can only take one of them and discard the other, and I have hesitated between the two for so many years to consider which one I shall take.” (Amy Tan, 1989: P261). In reality, each identity is itself mixed: just as the American culture is not wholly about autonomy, and liberty, the Chinese culture is not wholly passivity, obedience, and self-restraint. So, It is not necessary to figure out which is which, because she has been already accustomed to American life and live well enough.2.1.3 Anmei HsuAt an early age, Anmei Hsu learns some lessons in stoic and severe love from her maternal grandmother and from her mother. Her mother also teaches her to swallow her tears, to conceal her pain, and to see beyond others appearances. Her grandma once told her that, “When you lose your face, Anmei, it just as you drop your necklace in to the well. So the only means to save it is to jump in the well right after it.”(Amy Tan, 1989: P34). When Anmeis grandma is seriously ill, her mother slices off a piece of her own flesh to put it in her mothers soup, hoping superstitiously to cure her. Having grown up in such circumstance, Anmei understand the meaning of “ your hair and skin are all from your parents” in a deep sense. “A daughter is so filial towards her mother, and this obedience has already been engraved into her marrow, thus the pain suffered from it seems so trivial and insignificant to mention. You have to forget that pain.” (Amy Tan, 1989: P39). However, Anmeis mothers first lessonthat one should swallow his own tearsproves harmful, first to Anmeis mother herself, then to Anmei, and then to Rose, to whom Anmei passes it on unwittingly. Anm phenomenon, saying that even though she tried to teach her daughter to speak up for herself, Rose followed in her mothers footsteps. Anmei remarks that only after her own mothers ei reflects on thisphenomenon, saying that even though she tried to teach her daughter to speak up for herself, Rose followed in her mothers footsteps. Anmei remarks that only after her own mothers suicide did she learn “to shout” and to assert herself. Anmei 装订线. . . 第 4 页论 文 专 用 纸. . recognizes that while passivity may once have been the only option for women, women no longer need live this way. She wonders now how to rectify the seemingly irrepressible force of inheritance, how to extricate her mothers passivity from her daughter. There is no doubt that it is American circumstances that give Anmei this thought. 2.1.4 Yingying St. ClairYingying was born in the year of the Tiger, a creature of force and stealth. However, when her nursemaid tells her that girls should be meek and passive, Yingying begins to lose her sense of autonomous will. Furthermore, at an early age Yingyings profound belief in fate and her personal destiny led to a policy of passivity and even listlessness. Always listening to omens and signs, she never paid attention to her inner feelings. Because she believed that she was “destined” to marry a vulgar family friend, she did nothing to seriously prevent the marriage, and even came to love her husband against her will. So she made no real effort to resist, and the tragic course of events that followed destroyed her spirit. After she aborted her child, Yingying thought she would take advantage of the cunning, “black” side of her Tiger spirit and wait for a ripe opportunity to reenter life in full force. However, when she meets Clifford St. Clair, Yingying displays the same fatalism that led her to her first marriage disaster. Although she neither likes nor dislikes the foreign merchant, she “knows” that he embodies a message: that the black side of her would soon fade away. On entering America with the man, Yingyings identity was altered by changing her name, and also, accidentally, her birthday. She was held as a “displaced person” at the immigration station, and this image persists as a motif throughout the story. When the St. Clairs move to a new neighborhood, Linas father sees the shift as a rise in status, but Yingying judges her new apartment by different standards. She deems the house out of balance and feels a sense of foreboding, but she finds herself unable to explain her fears. She dose not refuse to speak out her actual worries and dissatisfaction, but she has no way to speak out. The dissatisfaction stems in part from her first move, from China to America, and from her more general failure to keep a balance between both sides of her life, both sides of her identity. The first marriage had already drained her spirit to such an extent that as soon as she stopped having to struggle to live, she became the ghost of the tiger she had once been. Yingying has decided to make a change, because she realizes that she has passed on her passivity and fatalism to her daughter Lina. Seeing her daughter in an unhappy marriage, she urges her to take control. “Her wisdom is like a bottomless lake. You throw stones in and they sink into the darkness and dissolve. Her eyes looking back do not reflect anything. I think this to myself even though I love my daughter. She and I have shared the same body, but when she was born, she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away even since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore. And now I must tell her everything about my past. It is the only way to pull her to where she can be saved.” (Amy Tan, 1989: P236). She tells Lina her story for the first time, hoping that she might learn from her mothers own failure to take initiative and instead come to express her thoughts 装订线. . . 第 5 页论 文 专 用 纸. . and feelings. “Many years hardships and suffering have already made me more sensitive and accurate about all kinds of signs. I must use the painful horn of the “tiger” to poke my daughter to awake her. I know that she will fight with me, because we were both born in the year of Tiger, and to fight is the nature of tiger. But I will win her, because I love her.” (Amy Tan, 1989: P246). In this belief in astrology Yingying finds a sort of positive counterpart to her earlier, debilitating superstitions and fatalism, for it is a belief not in the inevitability of external events but in the power of an internal quality.2.2 Cultural identity of the daughtersWhile the daughters in the novel are genetically Chinese (except for Lina who is half Chinese) and have been raised in mostly Chinese households, they also identify themselves with and feel at home in modern American culture. Only as they mature, the daughters begin to sense that their identities are incomplete and become interested in their Chinese heritage. 2.2.1 Jingmei WooIn a way, Jingmei Woo is the main character of the novel. Structurally, her narratives serve as bridge between the two generations of storytellers, as Jingmei speaks both for herself and for her recent deceased mother, Suyuan. She also bridges America and China. Jingmei denied during adolescence that she had any internal Chinese aspects, insisting that her Chinese identity was limited only to her external features and going by an English name “June”. She believes that her mothers constant criticism bespeaks a lack of affection, when in fact her mothers severity and high expectation are expressions of love and faith in her daughter. All of the other mother-daughter pairs experience the same misunderstanding, which in some ways may be seen to stem from cultural differences. “The aunties are looking at me as if I had become crazy right before their eyes. And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters as ignorant and indifferent as me of the principles our mothers bring to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in ChineseWithout any other means, they watch their daughters grow up day by day, and then marry and bear children, but without any connecting hope or possibility passed from generation to generation.” (Amy Tan, 1989: P30). But when she makes a journey to China, she begins to understand her mother as well as her Chinese heritage. She comes to see that China itself contains some American aspects, just as the part of American she grew up in-San Franciscos Chinatown-contained Chinese elements. Although Jingmei has been envisioning her first real Chinese meal to be a several course banquet, the relatives wish to stay with them in their hotel for the night and decide to order room service: hamburgers, French fries, and apple pie. Yet, Jingmei also goes further than Lindo in contemplating the nature of a double identity. Lindo feels uncomfortable in her recognition that American culture has left an indelible trace on her. She fears that she has lost a certain purity or honesty of herself. In contrast, Jingmei joyfully comes to recognize the Chinese heritage that lies deep within herself; she happily perceive that the American culture she has embraced for so long does not preempt装订线. . . 第 6 页论 文 专 用 纸. . a Chinese consciousness as well. Seeing her sisters for the first time makes her realize that her identity need not be proven to anyone, for it is innate. 2.2.2 Waverly JongWaverly Jong has always been a model of success, winning chess tournaments as a child and eventually building a lucrative career as an attorney. Much of Waverlys talent in chess came from her ability to hide her thoughts and channel invisible powers taught by her mother Lindo. She fears that Chinese identity has come to constitute merely Waverlys exterior, while American identity dominates her interior self. Lindo blames herself for Waverlys lopsided duality. She even meditates that Waverly would clapped her hands for joy during her teen years if she had told her that she did not look Chinese. Yet, from Waverlys own narrative, we know that Lindos fears are not entirely justified. Waverly exhibits a deep respect and concern fo