关键词:中国故事书写语境美国生活 II 华中科技大学硕士学位论文 Abstract The Joy Luck Club is one of the most influential works that Amy Tan has written since 1989. This novel with sixteen chapters which are divided into four parts tells the stories of four mothers who are Chinese-immigrant and their daughters who were born in America. Most existing criticism think that mothers’ Chinese stories stand for Chinese life while daughter’s represent American life. However, born in America, Amy Tan has been nurtured by American culture and has been deeply influenced by American ideology. She mainly gets familiar with Chinese culture through her mother’s tales. Moreover, she asserts that she is an American writer and she can impossibly have the viewpoint of Chinese writers. In spite of this, Amy Tan adopts many Chinese stories in her novel. Then what is her purpose of adopting Chinese stories? To display Chinese culture or to represent American life? Through analyzing the four mothers’ Chinese stories, this thesis finds out these Chinese stories in fact convey American life: American dream, individualism, identity-vacancy and identity-seeking. In The Joy Luck Club, Chinese stories only provide the writing context for the writer. In this writing context Amy Tan represents American life in the American vie
