Amy Tan’s Use of Prologues to Bridge the Gap Between Chinese and American Culture Madeline Bilbra College

Cultural divides are difficult to overcome in storytelling, because readers must both re-orient their largest cultural assumptions and understand the ideas of specific, unique characters. However, in The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan effectively makes much of Chinese culture comprehensible to American readers. In describing a culture that is exceedingly different from the American way of life, Tan presents both cultures side by side in order to draw attention to their differences. One way she accomplishes this task is through the use of prologues that frame each of the four sections of the book. Each prologue gives the reader a cultural perspective, which allows for better interpretations of the book’s sections. These prologues unite the short story sections and as the prologues themselves come together to form one story, they bring the collection together as a whole to form an in-depth look at Chinese culture’s survival in American society. Amy Tan uses section prologues to establish viewpoints from which to observe and interpret each section while establishing general conflicts facing the characters in the short story collection; the prologues progress from identifying the problem to suggesting the continuance of cultural heritage,...