Amy Tan: The Kitchen God's Wife

The person I chose to talk about for my blog is very inspirational and has an uplifting story. This person is Amy Tan! A quick background story about my author is that she was born in Oakland California and both of her parents were Chinese immigrants, so growing up was very hard for her. However, I was pleased to learn that she was a very educated person. She won many awards for her books and was always the inspiration for her family. Amy Tan's family had a rough period in their lifetime however. This was because Amy Tan’s mother became very sick. Amy promised her mother that if she became better, she would take her to China to find their long lost daughter! This wish came true and off to china they went. The trip opened tan's eyes and it gave her the courage and ideas to write about the book called The Joy Luck Club. This book won enthusiastic reviews and spent eight months on the New York Times best-seller list and paperback rights sold for $1.23 million. Currently, the book has been translated in 17 languages and she won numerous awards. This story is about sixteen interlocking stories. These stories tell the lives of four Chinese immigrant women and their four American born daughters (Academy of Achievement Website).

However, I wanted to make everyone aware of another great novel by Amy Tan. This book is called The Kitchen God’s Wife. This book consists of about three main characters Winnie, Pearl, and Helen. Helen and Winnie have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years. Sadly readers learn that Helen is dying from a tumor and Helen wants to expose everything about her life. She wants to tell her daughter (Pearl) about the past. We begin the story on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s. We learn about the desperate events that led to Winnie's journey to America in 1949.



The book looks at a major theme that we learned in our gender and women class. These themes consist of the idea of female struggle in a patriarchal society. The role of women in the book constantly changes because the novel spans over decades and two different countries. At the beginning of the novel we learn of Pearl, who is Helen’s daughter. Pearl is modern everyday workingwoman and is currently married to a fantastic husband. We learn how great of a man he is thought his relationship with his children. However, as the readers get further into the novel we are taken back to another kind of society in which women are seen very differently. Strong women in this society are often punished and shunned. We can relate this to our class because everyday we read articles over and over again consisting of the struggles women are facing to be equal to men. Medea is a good example of this because to the town she was a terrible mother. She ended up killing her own kids to show her husband who was in charge, to an extent.

Although, power between men and women is always going to be an issue that society, it is something to need to deal with. I ask my readers, why do you think men believe they are greater then women? My simple answer is that right now it’s just the world we live in. I believe, it will change however, if a woman becomes president. However, getting back to the book and my next theme we learn that Winnie's mother who is a modern Shanghai woman had been shunned for her opinions and self- determination. One of the only pieces of advice I believe even mention in the story consist of her father saying to Winnie that her husband, his opinions, and desires must come before her own. Truly a hard time in living in a society where you can’t even think in your own thought. We then learn through these secrets that Winnie struggles throughout her youth. She struggled with understanding the idea of how to be a good wife because her society and the world around her only brought her suffering.

We can relate this to a major topic that we talk about in our class, which is motherhood. I ask my blog readers right now what makes a good mother? Clearly, the society Winnie was living in brought her pain and suffering. I define motherhood as being an everyday-working woman who job is to teach their children lessons so they don’t make the same mistakes over and over again! Their job is to make sure their children are loved and are living a good life (The Kitchen God's Wife). We can also relate this to article we read in class called, “The Revolt of Mother” by Mary Freeman. Mary Freeman's article basically argued that it is time for mothers to put their foot down and to start getting some credit that they deserve by not following society. That change is happening and the numbers are uprising! Motherhood is clearly defined in our own current culture and it’s also defined as biological especially when it comes to childbirth. That bond that you and your child are going to share is going to be a bond that the father figure will never experience. (Revolt of Mother)

This book, The Kitchen God's Wife, is truly inspirational and relates to a lot of our major themes that we discuss in our class! I hope you check and it out because Amy Tan is one of those people who after you read her book you feel there is good in the world. Please comment on my blog!

Sources: (General information from)

Amy Tan Biography -- Academy of Achievement." Academy of Achievement Main Menu. Web. 18 Apr. 2010. .

Wilkins, Mary E. "Revolt of Mother." Comcast.net: Personal Web Pages. 10 Feb.
2010. .

Tan, Amy. The Kitchen God’s Wife. New York: Ivy, 1992. Print.