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Adams (2003) considered Weili's psyche as a response to her previous past, specifically, when she was raped by Wen Fu in the midst of the Sino-Japanese War. Adams drew an analogy from this event in Weili's life, illustrating how the supposed "Rape of Nanking" was made more concrete and specific to her experience, depicting Wen Fu as the Japanese who invaded Nanking, and Weili epitomizing her fellow Chinese women, who became the direct victims of this historical tragedy (12). Weili's coping mechanism, which is the creation of made-up histories, became her response to the two kinds of 'rape' she experienced in life: the war that destroyed her homeland, and the unfortunate event that led to an intensification of her sorrow and bitterness in life. These are the sentiments also expressed by Zeng (2003), wherein he explicated on Weili's sufferings (5):
Chinese-born mothers are trapped in nostalgia for a lost relation and, therefore, desiring for...
(2003). "Representing history in Amy Tan's the Kitchen God's Wife." MELUS, Vol. 28, No. 2.
Dunick, L. (2006). "The silencing effect of canonicity: authorship and the written word in Amy Tan's novels." MELUS, Vol. 31, No. 2.
Lee, K. (2004). "Cultural translation and the exorcist: A reading of Kingston's and Tan's Ghost stories." MELUS, Vol. 29, No. 2.
Tan, a. (1991). The Kitchen God's Wife. London: Flamingo.
Zeng, L. (2003). "Diasporic self, Cultural other: Negotiating ethnicity through transformation in the fiction of Tan and Kingston." Language and Literature, Vol. 28.
Bibliography
Adams, B. (2003). "Representing history in Amy Tan's the Kitchen God's Wife." MELUS, Vol. 28, No. 2.
Dunick, L. (2006). "The silencing effect of canonicity: authorship and the written word in Amy Tan's novels." MELUS, Vol. 31, No. 2.
Lee, K. (2004). "Cultural translation and the exorcist: A reading of Kingston's and Tan's Ghost stories." MELUS, Vol. 29, No. 2.
Tan, a. (1991). The Kitchen God's Wife. London: Flamingo.
Through her mother's story, Pearl learns why her mother acts as she does. She also learns what an amazing woman she is and how proud she is to have her as a mother. Most important, she realizes that the time has indeed come to break her silence and tell Winnie about her MS. Pearl's admission gives Winnie the opportunity to once again help her daughter, but this time they will
..I ask you, isn't that fate meant to be?" Now, Pearl realizes that Winnie's fatalism is not all negative. That, too, she has not understood about her mother and what keeps her going. Pearl recognizes the strength never left her mother. For the sake of her daughter, she kept on going. Her greatest fault: becoming disillusioned with life. But now, she can perhaps work on those feelings, because she will
She finds out how it came to be that her mother moved to America and the secret is released that Winnie has been holding her entire life. Pearl's father, or at least the man she always knew as her father is not her biological father and she realizes through this story that her mother made choices in life that caused her great pain but later found someone who would love
Huntley 16) The imagination and the old standards and emphasis on luck and fate either good or bad drives the narrative account of Pearl's mother in the work, as she navigates through the traditions of the culture of women plotting to alter their own fates and in so doing changing the fate of others. "Tan first presents in the Kitchen God's Wife the indigenous informants "Winnie Louie, Helen (or Hulan), and
Reading between the lines it can be understood that one must not be influenced by the pressures of the environment and of the other people. All in all it can be stated that a major theme in the works of May Tan is represented by the American colonialism taking place in the contemporary world at cultural level. Just as it has been stated in the beginning of the paper, language
For Amy Tan, however, attempting, for her parents' sake, to become simultaneously Chinese and American, without compromising either culture, or herself, was a tricky balancing act. As E.D. Huntley adds: Amy Tan spent her childhood years attempting to understand, as well as to come to terms with and to reconcile, the contradictions between her ethnicity and the dominant Western culture in which she was being raised and educated. She lived the