Victoria Chen (Essay Date 31 March 1995)

SOURCE: Chen, Victoria. "Chinese American Women, Language, and Moving Subjectivity." Women and Language 13, no. 1 (31 March 1995): 3-9.

In the following essay, Chen discusses the effects on Chinese American women of "dual cultural enmeshment," particularly where language is concerned, as it is explored in works by Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston.

It was not until the 1970s that Asian American literature became recognized as a separate canon and a "new tradition" of writing. While this "new" form of expression created a new political consciousness and identity, the images and stories that abound in pioneer literature such as Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior and China Men are paradoxically located in "recovered" ethnic history (Lim, 1993, p. 573). More recently, Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club also takes the reader through a journey back to a specific set of ethnic memories as the mothers in the...