Compare And Contrast Tan And Hurston

Pratikshya Thapa
Prof. Alex Kurian
English 2328-73001
12 April 2017
Winnemucca, Hurston and Tan
The American Literature consists of artists from various cultural and social background who devoted their life in literary works. There are number of female authors who are known for their magnificent writings. Sarah Winnemucca, Zora Neale Hurston and Amy Tan are some of the famous female American authors. They belong to different racial and cultural backgrounds but share a common ground when it comes to expressing their life experience and opinions through their literary art works. Moreover, they are thought to be the public figures who have contributed to American literature over the past decades. The authors mentioned above have their own writing

Her famous literary work ‘How It Feels To Be Colored Me’ was the portrayal of the racial discrimination and inequalities faced by the Black people during that period. Hurston explains how she for the first time in her life realized she was colored and her experiences as a minority is being gracefully put into words (Baym, 2012). Her basic purpose of writing was to provide the realistic portrayal of her race the way it is. Similarly, she did not have any complaints about being black while she didn’t want to fall behind because of the racial issue. Likewise, Amy Tan being a Chinese American author grew up in an environment which had a mixture of Chinese and American culture. Tan expresses the life experiences of Chinese immigrants to the United States and attempts to depict the relationship of a mother and daughter through her significant piece of writing ‘The Joy Club’. Therefore, all these authors somehow portrayed their early struggles and their view point towards life from their literary

For instance, her famous novel ‘The Joy Luck Club’ depicts the Chinese mother and her American daughter relationship where they go through various circumstances trying to understand each other including the evolvement that comes in their relationships as the daughters know more about their mother’s life stories. Secondly, Tan considers the theme of identity in terms of Chinese immigrants and their life experiences as an immigrant in the United States. She reveals how the children born to the immigrants strive in an environment which is a mixture of American and Chinese influence. Moreover, Tan is found to have explored identity issues through her fictive creations and tackled the issue of authorial identity (Becnel, 2010). Similarly, romantic love is another subject included in the literary artworks of Amy Tan which considers the relationships and romance an important aspect of human’s life. She is found to have given equal consideration to romantic love as she discusses about the mother daughter relationship (Becnel,