From the 1860s onwards, the United States was described as a "paradise" of freedom, democracy, and abundance. In the 1960s, social waves such as the American civil rights movement, the feminist movement, and the anti-Vietnam War greatly stimulated the national consciousness of Asian Americans. The novel "Xifuhui" by The Chinese-American female writer Tan Enmei describes a generation of Chinese women facing the hegemonic discourse of American racial discrimination and mainstream American culture, building self-confidence, walking out of inferiority, and realizing the return of the soul.
"Happy Luck Club" is the name of the party that mothers who immigrated to the United States to play mahjong.
The novel tells the story of four Chinese women who immigrated to San Francisco in the 1950s. The four Chinese immigrants to the United States met each other through playing mahjong and established a club together, "Happy Luck Club", which pinned their expectations for a better life. The four Chinese women each have a daughter, and as Chinese mothers, they have difficulty communicating with their American-born daughter and their daughter's lover and friends. Obviously, this communication barrier comes from the different cultural backgrounds of mother and daughter. Mothers grew up under the traditional Chinese high-context culture, while their daughters grew up infested with the low-context culture of the United States.
A character in The Happy Luck Club
The story shows the contradictions and confusions faced by two generations of women on the margins. The daughters of the four mothers have been subjected to new educational methods and life patterns since childhood, and there seems to be an unresponsive gap and insoluble contradictions between mother and daughter. However, the blood and love between mothers and daughters prompted both sides to work hard to resolve their contradictions, and eventually they went from not understanding each other to understanding, from accepting to accepting.
Xu Anmei (left) and Ruth (right)
Throughout the book, through the description of the mothers' stories, it brings a large picture of Chinese culture: three wives and four concubines, witchcraft worship, superstitious fear, and obedience. This is one of the reasons why "Xifuhui" has been criticized: this is not real Chinese culture, but "Chinese culture" in the eyes of foreigners, and it is also one of the important reasons why "Xifuhui" was popular with the Mainstream Western media that year.
Wu exquisite
Tan Enmei is a Chinese in the eyes of Westerners, but she does not please Chinese readers or foreign readers, and her independent identity is the fundamental reason for the moving work.
Note: "ABC" – American Born Chinese, a Chinese naturalized with Western values.