The Kitchen God's Wife Study Guide

Amy Tan wrote The Kitchen God’s Wife about her mother, Daisy. Most of Winnie’s story in the novel is drawn from Daisy’s life, including the difficult life and marriage she left behind in pre-communist China. The presentation of Winnie’s story, as she tells her story to Pearl, is reminiscent of the oral tradition. Tan, like Pearl, had never given much thought to her mother’s life in China, and she was amazed at what she learned.

When Tan started on her second novel, she wanted to avoid rehashing material and ideas from her successful first novel, The Joy Luck Club. She sequestered herself with soothing music and incense, realizing that solitude was her surest path to the next novel. Although she tried numerous times to write about something different, the story in The Kitchen God’s Wife cried out to be told, and Tan realized that the pursuit of diversity was not a good reason to write about one topic over another. Her mother’s eagerness to have her story fictionalized was also a major influence.

And so, The Kitchen God’s Wife shares certain themes with The Joy Luck Club. Both The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife portray strained relationships between immigrant mothers and their American daughters. The theme of alienation also appears in both works. Despite its similarities to the first novel, the second novel won applause from Tan’s readers and critics. Her novels contain a multitude of stories that converge into a cohesive work, and Tan is admired for her ability to move from the past to the present in her storytelling.

The Kitchen God's Wife Summary

Chapters One–Two
The first two chapters of The Kitchen God’s Wife are narrated by Pearl Brandt, the daughter of Winnie Louie, a Chinese woman who immigrated to the United States in adulthood. Winnie has convinced Pearl to attend an engagement banquet for her cousin in San Francisco. Reluctantly, Pearl agrees and then stays in the city an extra day to attend the funeral of Auntie Du.

During the engagement banquet, Winnie’s close friend Helen tells Pearl she (Helen) has a brain tumor and will be forced to reveal Pearl’s secret (that she has multiple sclerosis) to her mother unless she tells her herself. She hints that her mother also has secrets she may share with her daughter.

The relationship between Winnie and Pearl is strained because the Americanized daughter and her immigrant mother have little in common. The one thing they both understand is their grief, years previously, over the loss of Pearl’s father, Jimmy, who was Winnie’s great love. At the funeral for Auntie Du, Pearl has a breakthrough in which she finally cries for Jimmy. In her will, Auntie Du leaves Pearl her altar to the Kitchen God, a minor deity who, as a mortal, was an abusive husband to his virtuous wife. As a deity, he reports to the Jade Emperor about who has been good and who has been bad.

Chapters Three–Ten
Helen has told Winnie, too, of her illness and of the need to bring secrets into the open, so Winnie asks her daughter to sit with her in the kitchen while she tells all of her secrets. Chapters three through twenty-four are told from Winnie’s point of view.

Winnie begins her story by describing her mother, the vain second wife of her wealthy father. When Winnie is six, her mother takes her on a funfilled trip into the city, where they share wonderful experiences and see exciting things. The next day, Winnie’s mother mysteriously disappears, and Winnie is sent to live with an uncle and his family so as not to remind her father of his missing wife. Winnie is unhappy in the new family because they are not as wealthy and treat her like a guest instead of like a family member. She makes friends with her cousin Peanut, a girl about the same age as Winnie. The two grow into adolescence together, carrying on like sisters.

During a New Year’s festival, Winnie and Peanut go in search of trinkets and fortunes when they meet a charming young man named Wen Fu. He flirts with Peanut and later courts her. Winnie is suspicious of Wen Fu... » Complete The Kitchen God's Wife Summary