Cultural reconciliation in Amy Tan's the joy luck club and the Kitchen God's Wife

In The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God's Wife , Amy Tan tells us about the life of women, who live in America, are originally from China. The first-generation women, mothers and the second generation, daughters are the main characters in her books. In her semi-autobiographic books, Amy Tan handled the problems of the mothers who immigrated to America and their daughters who were born in American culture. In both books, the plot is narrated from the perspectives of mothers' and daughters'. These characters experience the difficulties of having two different cultures. While mothers do not desire to split off from their origins, daughters follow the American values. Identity problems, the lack of communication between mothers and daughters, language problems and adaptation prevent reaching an agreement between mothers and daughters. On one hand, all those problems make it hard to reach an agreement with American culture for the first generation of Chinese mothers on the other hand, cultural problems prevent the second generation of Chinese-American daughters' accepting the idea of being Chinese originated. But in the final of the two books, main characters begin to understand each other. Especially as the second-generation Chinese women get to know their mothers, they realize the similar traces that they have and they come to an agreement with their mother and their Chinese origins. In this thesis, I am going to study the conflicts between mothers and daughters and the reconciliation from the aspect of mother and daughter. I would like to make a comment on the problem of identity, lack of communication, cultural and generation differences which cause the disagreement. I am going to reveal how reconciliation is shaped in novels which is my main studying subject.