灶君

Title：The Kitchen God's Wife
Author: Tan, Amy (1952 - )
Thorndike, Me. : Thorndike Press, 1992, c1991
738 p. (large print)
Read by: 06/28/2010, Borrowed from WBPL, later in my collection
Genre: Fiction

Amy Tan’s novels I read so far are always about one of the two topics: women’s identity, immigrants culture struggle. This novel is about both. Winnie eventually transformed from a Kitchen’s God’s wife type to a sorrow-free strong willed lady, after two decades of turmoil, misfortune and torture. Didn’t her traditional ideals make her suffer more? The daughter and mother came to be closer after sharing their secrets and life experiences. I like Sparton’s note: a "hyphenated experience" is not all negative because once one learns to accept the mixture and the beauty of living in two cultures one can begin to reap the benefits of understanding, much like in the "happy" ending of Tan's novel. I realized many Chinese immigrants struggling between the two cultures tend to abandon their Chinese identity, it is of course easier for survival, but the beauty of accepting and mixing the two is lost and stopped at their very generation.

This novel is a condensed version of Joy Luck Club. I appreciate Amy Tan’s culture consciousness. As a second generation of Chinese immigrants, she is yet working hard to bridge the gap of understanding, between two generations, two cultures, and more importantly between the self whose life spans through two countries. That’s why she holds an important position in Asian literature.