Revisiting Chinese history in Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife

Abstract

This research is concerned with the contextual and historical influences along with autobiography, culture and religion on the fictional work The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan. These elements, in fact, help to blur the boundary between history and fiction. Fiction is an imaginary construct, however, the presence of these facts in a fictional work convert a text into a factual document. Moreover, context of the writer affects the text. Author's ideology has been explicitly dominant in the text. Jiang Weili, a character in the novel, resembles Tan's mother; and Pearl, the daughter of Weili, resembles Tan herself. Sino-Japanese war also gets imitated in the text. Chinese people's suffering, Japan's attack on China and America's participation in the war confuse the common readers. So, this research contends to prove that history, culture, religion, autobiography etc. are the backbones of a literary text. The presence of Chinese history in the fictional work, influence of Confucian and Chinese culture, resemblance of author's autobiography and religion, finally, converts the novel The Kitchen God's Wife into a historical document.