Identity Conflict in The Kitchen God’s Wife

This paper aims to tackle the identity struggles that are experienced by the women protagonist characters in The Kitchen God’s Wife. The Chinese American novelist Amy Tan uses her childhood memories with a personal background in writing the plot of her novels. She introduces the conflicts and dilemmas that Chinese American families face in the United States, such as identity, culture, and language. In her works, Amy Tan establishes clear connections between the present and past; she depicts how the recent problems in America are connected to the past sufferings in China. In this novel, Tan illustrates the culturally transforming experiences of a Chinese immigrant woman, Jinge Winnie, with her American-born daughter Pearle. This paper implements textual analysis as a research method to explain the identity conflict within the characters. This study discusses Winnie’s past traumatic experiences in China and their role in shaping her identity. Winnie’s identity issues create enormous conflicts with her daughter Pearl. In addition, Tan introduces a feministic struggle over culture and identity between Winnie and Pearl due to their different perspectives on life in the United States. Their quest is for identity and inner –self. The result of this paper shows to what degree the communication between mother-daughter assists in resolving the identity struggles that they experienced throughout their lives to claim their power in the world.