two kinds背景介绍

1.Amy Tan 谭恩美1. Personal life:Amy Tan is a Chinese American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. She was born in Oakland, California in 1952. She is the middle child in the family. In the late 1960s, her sixteen-year-old brother, Peter, died of a brain tumor. Within a year of Peter's death, Amy's father died of the same disease.After these family tragedies, her mother moved Amy and her younger brother to Switzerland, where Amy finished high school. During this period, Amy learned about her mother's former marriage to an abusive man in China.Amy received her bachelor's and master's degrees in English and linguistics from San JoséState University, and later did doctoral linguistics studies at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley.2. Her famous works:Main novels: The joy Luck Club (1989) 喜福会The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991) 灶神之妻The Hundred Secret Senses (1995) 百种神秘感觉Saving Fish from Drowning (2005) 拯救溺水鱼Other Major works:Children literature: the Moon Lady, 1992 《月亮夫人》，illustrated by Gretchen Schields (1992)Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat,1994 《中国暹罗猫》illustrated by GretchenSchieldsNon-fiction: the Opposite of Fate 《命运的逆反》or《事与愿违》 A Book of Musings，(2003) Mid-Life Confidential ,(1994)《中年心腹话》Mother 《母亲》(with Maya Angelou, Mary Higgins Clark) (1996)The best Americans short stories, (1999)3. Writing styles:Tan is the author to explore to relationships between the mother and the daughter. Most of her fiction, the conflict between parents and children can be visible everywhere.Tan portrays the discrimination from the American to the Ethnic Chinese women.Simplistic writing style, important and powerful issues.First-person or narrative style4. Awards:Finalist National Book Award Finalist National Book Critics Circle AwardFinalist Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize Bay Area Book Reviewers AwardCommonwealth Gold Award American Library Association's Notable BooksAmerican Library Association's Best Book for Young AdultsAsian/Pacific American Awards for Literature Honorable MentionSelected for the National Endowment for the Arts' Big Read New York Times Notable Book Booklist Editors Choice Finalist for the Orange Prize Nominated for the Orange PrizeNominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary AwardAudie Award: Best Non-fiction, AbridgedParents' Choice Award, Best Television Program for ChildrenShortlisted British Academy of Film and Television Arts award, best screenplay adaptationShortlisted WGA Award, best screenplay adaptation2.The joy Lock Club 喜福会1. Introduction：Amy Tan’s the Joy Luck Club is a masterpiece in Chinese-American literature. The Joy Luck Club mothers and their daughters have been the focus of research ever since the publication of this book. Some researchers put the emphasis on the relationship between the mothers and daughters while some others believe that it is the writing style that makes Amy Tan’s the Joy Luck Club a success. For there are conflicts that have been vividly described in this book, some researchers making the conflicts in the Joy Luck Club the theme of their thesis. However, in this thesis, maternal love will be the theme, and it will be interpreted from a cultural point of view.Through the stories of the Joy Luck Club, the secret-laden lives of four Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters are shown in front of the readers. The daughters reject their mothers’ seemingly constant criticism of everything they choose, from husbands to hairdos. They view their mothers’ warnings as irrelevan t, and their advice as intrusive. The daughters do not know what has inspired their warnings and advice: the hardships their mothers suffered in China before coming to the United States. Thus, as the mothers see it; their daughters are flailing in their mo dern American circumstances, unable to use what is “in their bones,” the family’s inheritance of pain that led to their determined strength for survival, which their mothers try to bequeath them. The mothers, meanwhile, watch with heartache as their da ughters’ marriages fail, as they expect less and less and so accept less and less. Conflicts have become something that prevents the understanding and communication between mothers and daughters. In fact, all the conflicts are caused by cultural differences. The Joy Luck Club mothers have accepted and been deeply influenced by Chinese culture, while their daughters are born and grow up in the United States and know little about Chinese culture. What they have accepted is the American mainstream culture which is somehow contradictory with Chinese culture.However, due to the maternal love of the Joy Luck Club mothers, the mothers and daughters finally understand each other. The maternal love in the Joy Luck Club helps the daughters understand their mothers; furthermore, its significance lies in that it serves as a bridge of cultural understanding between Chinese culture and American culture.2.Conclusion：Due to the disparate cultures they are born in, the Joy Luck Club mothers and daughters at first find it is difficult to have mutual understanding. However, as the Joy Luck Club mothers tell the daughters their experiences in China, their American daughters begin to know why sometimes their mothers’ behaviors are so different, or even backward and superstitious in their eyes. Their mothers suffer a lot before they immigrate to the United States, but the maternal love they impart to their daughters is not changing. The love is a typically Chinese one and differs from the love their American classmates and friends receive from their mothers. However, the maternal love serves as a bridge that links the differences and conflicts between the mothers and daughters.To sum up, the Joy Luck Club mothers are the carriers of the traditional Chinese culture, the media of history and memory and the bridges that link the past and the present. Their maternal love to the daughters is laden with Chinese culture. It is just because of this maternal love that the Chinese culture can be extended; Chinese history and memory can be rebuilt for the daughters. Through the maternal love of their mothers, the Joy Luck Club daughters finally accept their mothers and the Chinese culture their mothers represent. And from a deep level, the maternal love in the Joy Luck Club represents the momentum of the understanding and blending of all the cultures in the world, which is a call of the new century.《喜福会》是美国著名的华裔女作家谭恩美的代表作品。