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UM E-Theses Collection (澳門大學電子學位論文庫)

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Title

Resistance and reconciliation in mother-daughter relationship in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior

English Abstract

Abstract The relationship between the immigrant Chinese mothers and their American- born daughters has been a complicated issue that is featured in both Maxine Hong Kingston's first book The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1976) and Amy Tan's first book The Joy Luck Club (1988). It is universal in the sense that mother-daughter relationship is complicated in nature. Adrienne Rich considers mother-daughter relationship as "the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement" (226). In other words, mother-daughter relationship is a complicated mixture of both love and hate. Nancy Chodorow considers mother-daughter relationship a 'narcissistic' one and that mothers tend to experience daughters as one with themselves. 1 In other words, instead of perceiving the daughters as independent individuals, mothers tend to identify their daughters in relation with themselves. As a result, the daughters do not have separate identities as noted by Marianne Hirsch.2 In fact, the daughters have become the extensions of their mothers. This explains why mothers always tend to impose their own dreams on their daughters. However, mother-daughter relationship depicted in the two narratives is also unique when we read it under the ethnic context, since those relationships are not only personal but also have social, racial, cultural, and political meanings. In this thesis, I will examine the reasons of the conflicts between the immigrant Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters mainly from the perspective of the daughters' resistance and the possible ways of reconciliation between them in The Woman Warrior and The Joy Luck Club. The immigrant experiences have shaped the mothers' strong-minded characters, brought those mothers rising authorities, and caused them to impose their ambitious dreams upon their daughters. However, as the second-generation Chinese Americans, the daughters have to face the dilemma of being considered as outsiders by both Chinese culture and American society. Driven by a desperate need to assimilate into the American society, the daughters resist their mothers and define their mothers as "others" in order to establish a proper identity as Asian Americans, which further strains their relationships with their mothers. In this thesis, I will compare the different living conditions between the mothers and daughters. I will examine the bicultural situations of the daughters as being oppressed by both sexism and racism in the white dominated society and how they resist their mothers as a way of self-identification. Moreover, I will also discuss the possibility of reconciliation and examine the possible ways of reconciliation between the Chinese mothers and their Americanized daughters.

Issue date

2016.

Author

Huo, Wen Bo

Faculty
Faculty of Arts and Humanities (former name: Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities)
Department
Department of English
Degree

M.A.

Subject

Women immigrants -- United States -- Case studies

Mothers and daughters -- United States -- Case studies

Supervisor

Wong Katrine K.

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Location
1/F Zone C
Library URL
991001639959706306