The True Message of Joy Luck Club and The Hundred Secret Senses Essay

The True Message of blessedness Luck Club and The Hundred Secret Senses Alice Walker calls Amy Tans novel, The satisfaction Luck Club, honest, moving, and beautifully courageous. Publishers Weekly describes the novel as intensely poetic, startlingly imaginative and moving ... deceptively simple yet inherently dramatic. Not only has Amy Tans fiction been praised for its literary merit, but it also has been include in anthologies of multicultural literature for its portrayal of Chinese and Chinese-American culture. However, critics such as George Tseo vehemently disagree with these and other accolades, particularly regarding the cultural details of Tans fiction and mandarin orange tree Chinese dialogue. I take umbrage at Amy Tans confused rendition of Mandarin not only because the true beauty of the language is obscured but because by doing so the Chinese culture is misrepresented. He argues that Tan uses phony and stereotypically wooden and metaphorical Chinese dial ogue, a one-sided over-emphasis on Chinese superstitious practices, and culturally implausible plots (339). Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong, an associate professor of Asian-American studies at the University of Berkeley, corroborates Tseos challenge of Tans cultural accuracy. Wong points out errors such as Tans misuse of the term tang jie or sugar babe in The Hundred Secret Senses, Tans third novel. Not only has Tan confused the word tang with its Chinese homophone--which does not mean sugar--but she has ascribed a metaphorical use, meaning a friend as close as a sister, to a term which only refers to a blood relative in the Chinese kinship system (180-82). Wong acknowledges that errors of the sugar sister type lin... ...s. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia Chelsea House, 1997. 85-7. Schell, Orville. Critical Extract. Asian-American Women Writers. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia Chelsea House, 1997. 82-3. Shear, Walter. Generational differences and the diaspora in The Joy Luck Club. Women Writers. 34.3 (Spring 1993) 193. Expanded Academic Index. Souris, Stephen. Only Two Kinds of Daughters Inter- Monologue Dialogicity in The Joy Luck Club. Melus 19.2 (Summer 1994)99-123. Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York Ivy Books, 1989. --------- The Hundred Secret Senses. New York Ivy Books, 1995. Willard, Nancy. Critical Extract. Asian-American Women Writers. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia Chelsea House, 1997. 84-5. Xu, Ben. Memory and the Ethnic Self Reading Amy Tans Joy Luck Club. Melus 19.1 (Spring 1994) 3-17.