Embracing Hybrid Identity and Celebrating Cultural Differences: Love and Hope across Time and Space in The Hundred Secret Senses
Keywords:
Amy Tan, Edward Soja, Hybrid Identity, The Hundred Secret Senses, Third Space, liminal entities, the Philosophy of the MindAbstract
Published in 1995, The Hundred Secret Senses is considered as Amy Tan’s most popular novel. While critics from home and abroad hold divergent opinions towards the novel, they tacitly find it crucial to deal with the problem of multiple cultural identities shown through the novel and that of whether Amy Tan is reinforcing or deconstructing the antagonistic relationship between Chinese culture and American culture. Upon these subjects, this paper holds that, Tan, as a Chinese American writer, has to find a way to deal with her difficult writing situation in America, where racism and cultural hegemony prevails. Indeed, Tan cannot be totally cleared of the suspicion that she is catering to the taste and preference of American readers, since she displays sharp cultural conflicts between Chinese and American culture and portrays a seemingly wacky and ignorant Chinese immigrant, Kwan. However, considering that quite a few characters in the novel possessed complex cultural identities or backgrounds, it can be said that, at least to some extent, the novel moves readers’ concern from the identity problems of the characters to the interactions and connections between them as individuals. Meanwhile, with the help of the Third Space theory and the Philosophy of the Mind, this paper believes that racial or cultural conflicts are not the central concern of Tan, instead, the belief in love and hope is the ultimate themes that she wants to emphasize. In this sense, the coexistence of different races and cultures is naturally reasonable, possible, and acceptable.
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