background-information-现代大学英语精读5课件

1、Two KindsBy Amy Tan (谭恩美 )From The Joy Luck ClubTwo KindsBy Amy Tan (谭恩美 )background-information-现代大学英语精读5课件The author The author background-information-现代大学英语精读5课件background-information-现代大学英语精读5课件About the author Tragedy struck the Tan family when Amys father and oldest brother both died of brain

2、tumors within a year of each other. Mrs. Tan moved her surviving children to Switzerland, where Amy finished high school, but by this time mother and daughter were in constant conflict.About the author Tragedy strucAbout the author Mother and daughter did not speak for six months after Amy Tan left

3、the Baptist college her mother had selected for her and follow her boyfriend to San Jose City College. Tan further defied her mother by abandoning the pre-med course to pursue the study of English and linguistics. About the author Mother and daAbout the author She received her bachelors and masters

4、degrees in these fields at San Jose State University. In 1974, she and her boyfriend, Louis DeMattei were married. They were later to settle in San FranciscoDeMattei, an attorney, took up the practice of tax law, while Tan studied for a doctorate in linguistics, first at the University of California

5、 at Santa Cruz, later at Berkeley.About the author She received About the author By this time, she had developed an interest in the problems of the developmentally disabled. She left the doctoral program in 1976 and took a job as a language development consultant to the Alameda County Association fo

6、r Retarded Citizens and later directed a training project for developmentally disabled childrenAbout the author By this time,About the author With a partner, she started a business writing firm, providing speeches for salesmen and executives for large corporations. After a dispute with her partner,

7、who believed she should give up writing to concentrate on the management side of the business, she became a full-time freelance writer.About the author With a partneAbout the author Among her business works, written under non-Chinese-sounding pseudonyms, were a 26-chapter booklet called“Telecommunic

8、ations and You” , produced for IBM. Amy Tan prospered as a business writer. After a few years in business for herself, she had saved enough money to buy a house for her mother. About the author Among her busAbout the author She and her husband lived well on their double income, but the harder Tan wo

9、rked at her business, the more dissatisfied she became. The work had become a compulsive habit and she sought relief in creative efforts. She studied jazz piano, hoping to channel the musical training forced on her by her parents in childhood into a more personal expression.She also began to write f

10、iction.About the author She and her hAbout the author Her first story Endgame, won her admission to the Squaw Valley writers workshop taught by novelist Oakley Hall. The story appeared in FM, literary magazine, and was reprinted in Seventeen. A literary agent, Sandra Dijkstra, was impressed enough w

11、ith Tans second story Waiting Between the Trees, to take her on as a client. Dijlstra encouraged Tan to complete an entire volume of stories. About the author Her first stoAbout the author Just as she was embarking on this new career, Tans mother fell ill. Amy Tan promised herself that if her mother

12、 recovered, she would take her to China, to see the daughter who had been left behind almost forty years before. Mrs. Tan regained her health and mother and daughter departed for China in 1987. The trip was a revelation for Tan. It gave her a new perspective on her often-difficult relationship with

13、her mother, and inspired her to complete the book of stories she had promised her agent.About the author Just as she wAbout the author On the basis of the completed chapters and a synopsis(概要）of the others, Dijkstra found a publisher for the book, now called The Joy Luck Club. With a $50,000 advance

14、 from G.P. Putnams Sons, Tan quit business writing and finished her book in a little more than four months. Upon its publication in 1989, Tans book won enthusiastic reviews and spent eight months on the New York Times best-seller list. Paperback right sold for $1.23 million. The book has been transl

15、ated in 17 languages, including Chinese.About the author On the basis About the author Her subsequent novel, The Kitchen Gods Wife (1991) confirmed her reputation and enjoyed excellent sales. Since then Amy Tan has published two books for children, The Moon Lady and The Chinese Siamese Cat and two n

16、ovels. The Hundred Secret Senses (1995) and The Bonesetters Daughter (2001). The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings, appeared in 2003. Her most recent book, Saving Fish From Drowning explores the tribulations （艰难）experienced by a group of people who disappear while on an art expedition into the jun

17、gles of Burma.About the author Her subsequenAbout the Novel The Joy Luck ClubAmy Tans first and most successful novel.The book comprises a series of short-story-like vignettes(a short effective written description of character or scene) that move back and forth in time and space, between the lives o

18、f four Chinese women in pre-1949 China and their American-born daughters in California.It tells stories about four pairs of mothers and daughters-Suyuan Woo and Jing-mei(June); Anmei Hsu and Rose; Lindo Jong and Waverly; Ying-ying St. Clair and Lena. About the Novel The Joy Luck CAbout the Novel The

19、 Joy Luck ClubThese stories are told by seven voices, those of the mothers and daughters except for Suyuan Woo, who is dead when the story begins in the book. The different points of view enable us to look at the bittersweet mother-daughter relations from different angles.The mother and daughter tre

20、at one another cautiously, playing a game of love and fear, need and rejection. The older women, who suffered in Old China and emigrated to the United States with new hopes,About the Novel The Joy Luck Care ambitious for their daughters, but while they expect them to succeed in America, they want th

21、em to remain Chinese. The daughters consider themselves American and regard their mothers a source of embarrassment, for they speak fractured English, behave with Chinese manners, and wear funny-looking dresses with high, stiff collars and slits up the sides. They want to be different from their mot

22、hers, and break loose from their mothers cultural gravity. They yearn to leave tradition behind.are ambitious for their daughtAbout the Novel The Joy Luck ClubThe mother-daughter relationships are a mixture of love and hostility, expectations and disappointments, conflicts and reconciliation. When t

23、he daughters become older and more mature, they begin to reconsider their identity and reevaluate their cultural heritage. They discover that their mothers are “in their bones”, and that heritage is not something they can ignore and shake off easily.About the Novel The Joy Luck CAfter Suyuan Woos de

24、ath, her daughter Jing-mei (June), is invited to sit in her mothers seat at the mah-jongg table. At first she feels uncomfortably out of place in this world from which she has struggled to distance herself. As the aunts talk over the mah-jongg game about themselves and their daughters, she begins to

25、 see her mothers generation in a different light. Finally the aunts inform Jing-mei that the two Half sisters her mother had been forced to abandon during the war are still alive and areAfter Suyuan Woos death, her living in Shanghai . In the last section of the book Jing-mei tells about he trip to China to be united with the two sisters. “The minute our train leaves the Hong Kong border and enters Shenzhen, China, I feel different. I can feel the skin On my forehea