The Kitchen God's Wife

`The Kitchen God's Wife' by Amy Tan is a fictional novel about a mother's flash back experience, Wei Wei (Wennie), who escapes from her dreaded and abusive husband, Wen Fu. The story escalates from China to America. There is a lot of drama that's very emotional and many readers will tend to feel heart broken and sad.

Winnie is just such a strong individual and I really wonder how she managed to survive, but I think every battered wife and every fearful female should read `The Kitchen God's Wife'. As in `Joy Luck Club', the mother-daughter relationship plays a vital role in this book. I have notice that Chinese mothers can really be puzzling and unpredictable because their culture brings in so many supernatural forces, superstitions, beliefs which may seem absurd and probably unthinkable for those who don't understand them and is obviously still alive in their traditions. Even if you don't have a Chinese mother, this book still digs deep into your thoughts and makes you reconsider just how well you know your mother.

`The Kitchen God's Wife' also consists of family relationships, true friendship, human strength, despair, and above all, hopes. If you open your heart to it, it'll probably change your life. So for those of you, who have read `The Joy Luck Club' or are interested to read something with drama, then give `The Kitchen's God Wife' a try.

beautiful (0/0 people found this helpful)

I adore this book, I couldn't put it down. It's beautiful and sad, but written with such humour, I highly recommend it. Amy Tan is a fantastic writer.

Two different worlds (4/5 people found this helpful)

This novel is about Pearl Louie and her mother, Winnie. The complexities and tensions between a mother and daughter are subtle, yet poignant at times. Tan describes the trials of being an immigrant in the United States through the character Winnie, and the problems of growing up torn between one's racial heritage, and one's national heritage (being born in the United States as a minority). The story is moved along by the discovery of a family "secret" that threatens to make every moment Pearl has lived, only a lie.

The beginning and end of the book describe the interactions between a first-generation Chinese-American woman and her thoroughly Chinese mother, who came to America fleeing the Communists in 1949. In wonderfully authentic voices, Tan shows us each woman through the other's eyes, and the rest of the family through both sets. The love, tension, and misunderstanding between immigrants and their children, by now a reasonably familiar theme, is done in a comfortable low-key suburban way, without exaggeration or unnecessary crisis.

The middle of the book is the story of the mother's life in China, a life with the usual quota of mistreatment, oppression, bad marriages, dead children, lifelong friends, and so forth. If the head and tail of the book are about what happens when your children grow up American, the middle is an example of why you would want them to.

The Kitchen God's Wife

Amy Tan

Reader Reviews:

Amy Tan hasn't failed in bringing the emotional involvement in this book (1/1 people found this helpful)

beautiful (0/0 people found this helpful)

Two different worlds (4/5 people found this helpful)

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