The Kitchen God’s Wife (Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Amy Tan
- First Published: 1991
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: 1921-1990
- Setting: China and San Francisco, California
- Principal Characters: Weili “Winnie” Jiang, Jimmy Louie, Wen Fu, Pearl, Helen (Hulan), Grand Auntie Du, Peanut
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism, Family literature
- Subjects: Memory, Mothers, Parents and children, Prisoners, Abused persons, Twentieth century, Marriage, Abandoned children, Domestic violence, Rape, Ministry or ministers, Immigration or emigration, War, Multiculturalism, Divorce, Remarriage, Abandonment, China or Chinese people, Chinese Americans, Women’s rights, Multiple sclerosis
- Locales: San Francisco, CA, China
Form and Content
The Kitchen God’s Wife focuses on Weili “Winnie” Jiang’s attempt to narrate her life in China in a culture that denigrates females to her forty-year-old American-born daughter Pearl so that her daughter will understand and appreciate how her mother’s experiences have forged her identity. For example, the Chinese culture taught Winnie that a married woman is expected to defer to her husband’s opinions and preferences even to the point of submitting to depraved sexual abuse. Chinese law even supported her husband’s unilateral right to control...
[The entire page is 2474 words long]
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