Abstract Amy Tan is regarded as one of the most prominent Chinese American writers. Her first novel The Joy Luck Club has aroused extensive attention and ments from American literary circles since its publication. In this novel she narrates four pairs of mothers and daughters’ respective stories from the first person point of view. Through these stories, it explores the identity issue of Chinese American women. The thesis will focus on illustrating what obstacles these Chinese American women faced and how they recognize, search for their identity and inherit Chinese culture to rebuild themselves. It analyzes the Chinese American women’s obstacles from three aspects—race, the understanding between mothers and daughters and gender. In order to rebuild them self by searching for their true identity, these Chinese women adopt different methods, which will be summarized into three parts: gaining implications from mothers’ stories, root searching and the inheritance of Chinese cultural tradition. Besides, the implications are so important to the new generation immigrants from the experience of the Chinese American women in The Joy Luck Club. With these helps, the new generations will have a better future. At last, the thesis concludes that Chinese American women cannot be identified as pure Chinese, nor pure American, but Chinese Ame
