The Chinese Myths Of The Moon Lady And The Kitchen God Analysis

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Amy Tan's narratives serve as Asian American mythology because each story represents a typical conflict which many Asian Americans experience the conflict of living in one society and being influenced by it while the expectations of another society intrude with cultural demands and obligations. Also, these stories depict how Asian Americans daughters, can overcome this cultural conflict by accepting both their Asian and American heritage. Across cultures, human beings have always exhibited, and attempted to fulfill, a need for mythologies which reflect their ideologies and traditions. Moreover, mythology represents the need to establish identity through answering questions that have no obvious answers. The individuals who look into myths for …show more content…

These stories not only express a cultural ideology (particularly in terms of patriarchal attitudes) and contain references to deities and the supernatural; they also work on an internal level by reaffirming those cultural values. Tan's fiction presents these myths and deconstructs them in order to question the values that the original myths are supporting. In addition, her works contain a personal mythology, one that embodies the mothers' life histories and experiences. Although these stories are not myths or folktales in the traditional sense, their function in the novels and in terms of the characters' lives parallels the way a culture uses myths. In other words, the mothers attempt to share wisdom, folk knowledge (and this includes superstitions and the supernatural), and ideology with their daughters, and they use personal stories to accomplish this. The storytelling invoked by the mothers in these novels also parallels oral tradition and storytelling in preliterate cultures when the myths and folktales were told, rather than read. The daughters in the novels are hearing these tales from their mothers and incorporating them into a personal mythology of their own an Asian- American …show more content…

However, the themes and struggles presented in her fiction as well as her characters represent the experiences of many Asian-American writers and individuals experience and do address their need to construct an identity that includes both Asian and American cultural ideals. Tan's mothers and daughters experience and strive to attain what Asian- Americans such as myself work hard to achieve. Rather than simply presenting situations involving cultural tension. Amy Tan, through oral and mythical connections to the Chinese and American cultures, gives readers a glimpse into an Asian-American mythology, a culture comprised of two separate, often opposing ideals. This is not to say that anyone not of Asian descent can enjoy her fiction. Rather, the mythical element of Tan's novels allows anyone of any culture to connect to her characters, to notice real-life situations in her novels and see how the characters resolve cultural and familial conflicts. In The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife, Amy Tan uses stories from her own history and myth to explore the voices of mothers and daughters of Chinese ancestry. Each woman tells a story indicative of the uniqueness of her voice. In Tan’s fiction, the daughters’ sense of self is intricately linked to an ability to speak and be heard by their mothers. Similarly, the mothers experience

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