Haunted by Cultural Memory: Analysing Spectral Presence in Select Novels of Amy Tan

Q1 Arts and Humanities

Media Watch Pub Date : 2022-05-01 DOI:10.1177/09760911221092826

R. Bhattacharya

引用次数: 0

Abstract

This article depicts how Tan, following several writers of contemporary American literature, widely uses recollected cultural memories to construct ethnic ghost narratives in her novels that address the predicaments of Chinese immigrants in the US. In her novels, Tan reconstitutes cultural memories as cultural hauntings representing immigrants’ loss of identity and the repressed trauma of relocating to a new territory. Further, the notion of a matrilineal continuum in Tan’s fiction is intrinsically related to her fictional representation of cultural hauntings. Focusing on Tan’s use of ghost narratives in her novels The Joy Luck Club, The Hundred Secret Senses and The Bonesetter’s Daughter as a supernatural terrain constituted partly through collective cultural history and partly through personal memories of ancestors, this article demonstrates how such memories in being part of the Chinese American cultural unconscious assists Chinese immigrants to find a balance between their heritage and American lifestyles.

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文化记忆的萦绕:谭恩美小说选集中的幽灵存在分析

本文描述谭恩美是如何跟随几位美国当代文学作家的脚步，在她的小说中广泛运用文化记忆来构建民族幽灵叙事，以表达中国移民在美国的困境。在她的小说中，谭将文化记忆重构为文化困扰，代表了移民身份的丧失和被压抑的搬迁到一个新领域的创伤。此外，谭小说中母系统一体的概念与她对文化困扰的虚构表现有着内在的联系。本文以谭恩美在其小说《喜福会》、《百感秘》和《接骨师的女儿》中使用的鬼魂叙事作为一种超自然的地形，一部分是通过集体文化历史，一部分是通过对祖先的个人记忆构成的，以此来说明这些记忆作为华裔美国人文化无意识的一部分，如何帮助中国移民在他们的遗产和美国生活方式之间找到平衡。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Media Watch Arts and Humanities-Literature and Literary Theory

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