The Process of Identity Formation in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club : Amy Tan´s The Joy Luck Club

Abstract: Like most ethnic and multicultural narratives, Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club revolves around the development of an identity in which immigrant experience and all the questions of ethno- cultural identity that attend to it play central roles. The aim of this essay is to investigate the process of identity formation of the second-generation Chinese immigrant daughters who encounter Chinese culture at home while having the immediate experience of living in America, with a focus on the cultural, language and generational gaps that exist between the Chinese mothers and their American- born daughters. This study is guided by a theoretical framework that combines postcolonial theory and a number of established theories of identity construction including the concept of hybrid identity in order to analyze and explore the American-born daughters’ identity creation. Based on this analysis, this paper presents evidence that an identity formation process that involves cultural hybridization has occurred and the outcome of this identity formation is that of a hybrid identity.