Two worlds or one world:on the Chinese cultural identity from the inspect of Chinese literary works in America

Although the institutional Asian American Studies has paid attention to writings of American-born Chinese, the writings are battling to be recognized as part of American literary tradition.Up to now they are still regarded as “tales of others or “tales of outsiders. By discussing two representative Chinese American novels, Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book, this paper will mainly examine the issue of cultural identity represented in the novels, an issue inevitably problematized when the authors foreground the conflict between Chinese culture and American culture, the encounters between Chinese migrants and the people among whom they live, and the relationships between men and women and different generations of the Chinese diaspora in America. Although both works reflect such conflict and contradiction as characteristics of postmodern culture, the authors tackle them differently.