UNIVERSITE D’ANTANANARIVO ECOLE NORMALE SUPERIEURE DEPARTEMENT DE FORMATION INITIALE LITERAIRE C.E.R LANGUE ET LETTRES ANGLAISES THE INTEGRATION OF ASIAN PEOPLE INTO THE AMERICAN SOCIETY AS SEEN THROUGH AMY TAN’S NOVEL The Joy Luck Club AND JHUMPA LAHIRI’S Interpreter of Maladies WITH SOME EXTRACTS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF READING SKILLS IN “CLASSES TERMINALES” CAPEN Dissertation by RANDRIAMIARANA Fenitrarinofy Dissertation Advisors -Mrs RAZAIARIVELO Ascence Maître de Conférences -Mr MANORO Régis Maître de Conférences Academic Year 2006-2007 The Glory is for the Lord God Almighty To Michael and Danielle RAVALINIAINA Acknowledgements This end-of-study dissertation would not have been completed and ready for public presentation without the help and support of very many people to whom we are deeply indebted. First of all, we would like to praise the name of Jesus for giving us all the opportunity to accomplish this present dissertation. We are extremely grateful to Mrs RAKOTOMENA Norosoa, not only for her useful comments and advice, which have greatly contributed in the improvement of the initial version of our dissertation, but also for having accepted to preside over this public presentation of our dissertation. Special thanks are also due and thereby tendered Mr RAZAFINDRATSIMBA Eugène whose helpful comments have helped us to improve the present work and who have kindly accepted to assess our work. Acknowledgements are offered to Mrs RAZAIARIVELO Ascence and Mr MANORO Régis, our dissertation advisors, for their constant encouragement and their generous, patient and most invaluable guidance and supervision of our work. We are deeply indebted to each and every teacher of whom we feel fortunate to have been a student at the English Department of the Ecole Normale Superieure of Antananarivo. Last but not no means least, we are extremely grateful to all friends and family members for their unfailing patience and encouragement, their constant moral support. TABLE OF CONTENTS 0. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………...0 0.1 GENERAL PRESENTATION OF THE WORKS………………………….……..1 0.2 STRUCTURE OF THE DISSERTATION………………………………………..3 PART ONE: ASIAN AMERICAN IN THE AMERICAN SOCIETY………………..5 0.1 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………....6 1.1 GENERALITIES ON IMMIGRATION TO AMERICA IN THE NINETEETH CENTURY………………………………………………………………………...6 1.2 ASIAN AMERICANS IN THE AMERICAN SOCIETY…………………...…..... 8 1.2.1 Generalities…………………………………………………………………..8 1.2.2 Chinese and Indian immigration to America……………………………….14 1.2.2.1 Chinese immigration……………………………………………..…14 • The exploration of the West coast……………………………………14 • The Gold rush……………………………………………………….... 16 1.2.2.2 Indian immigration………………………………...……………….20 1-3 THE PROBLEMS OF ASIAN INTEGRATION IN THE AMERICAN SOCIETY. 1-3-1 Asian Americans and the American Laws…………………………………21 • Naturalization…………………………………………………………22 • Discrimination………………………………………………………...22 • Immigration……………………………………………...……………23 1-3-2 The building of new societies …………………………………..…………27 1-4 ASIAN AMERICANS AND THE XX CENTURY…………………..…………29 CONCLUSION TO PART ONE…………………………………………………….…34 I PART TWO: THE INTEGRATION OF ASIAN PEOPLE AS SEEN THROUGH AMY TAN’S The Joy Luck Club AND JHUMPA LAHIRI’S Interpreter of Maladies…………………………………………………………………………….……35 0.2 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………..36 2.1 THE SITUATION OF THE IMMIGRANTS’ HOMELAND……………...……36 2-1-1 China……………………………………………………………………….36 2-1-2 India………………………………………………………………………..48 2.2 PATTERN OF CHIINESE AND INDIAN IMMIGRATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AS SEEN THROUGH THE TWO NOVELS………….56 2.3 INTEGRATION IN SPACE……………………………………………………..62 2.4 ECONOMIC INTEGRATION…………………………………………………..71 2.5 CULTURAL INTEGRATION…………………………………..………………83 CONCLUSION TO PART TWO…………………………………………………..…100 II PART THREE: USING EXTRACTS FROM AMY TAN’S The Joy Luck Club AND JHUMPA LAHIRI’S Interpreter of Maladies FOR THE TEACHING OF READING IN “CLASSES TERMINALES”……………………………………………..………..99 0.3 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………100 3.1 THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE TEACHING OF READING.100 3.1.1 The Pre-reading stage………………………………………………….100 3.1.2 The While- reading stage……………………………………..……….102 3.1.3 The post-reading stage………………………………………..……….105 3.2 PRESENTATION OF THE EXTRACTS………………………………………108 3.2.1 Pedagogical interests of the novels…………………………...……….108 3.2.2 Selection of the texts……………………………………………….….108 3.3 SUGGESTED LESSON PLANS……………………..………………………… 110 3.3.0 Introduction……………………………………………………...…… 110 3.3.1 Complete lesson plan…………………………………………………110 3.3.2 Partial lesson plans……………………………………...…………….115 CONCLUSION TO PART THREE………………………………………………134 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………...…..135 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………..………………………………139 TABLE OF MAPS AND PICTURES………………………………………………..…….141 III 0. INTRODUCTION 0.1 GENERAL PRESENTATION OF THE WORKS The present dissertation is concerned with “The integration of Asian people into the American society as seen through The Joy Luck Club of AMY TAN and Interpreter of Maladies of JHUMPA LAHIRI”. The two novels relate the story of the immigration of Chinese and Indian people from their homelands to the United States in the twentieth century and describe the reasons of their move, how they get there, how they built life thereafter and what they became. Amy TAN was born in Oakland, California on February 19, 1952. Together with her family, they live in Santa Clara but before, they settled in several communities in Northern California. Her father John Tan came to America in order to escape the Chinese Civil War whereas her mother named Daisy escaped on the last boat to leave Shanghai before communist takeover in 1949. In the United States, John Tan and Daisy got married and had three children Amy and her two brothers. When Amy Tan left the Baptist College, she took up the study of English at San Jose State University and received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Later, she settled in San Francisco with her tax attorney husband Louis DeMattei and studied linguistics at the University of California at Santa Cruz and at Berkley. In 1976, she worked as a language development consultant at Aladma County Association for Retarded Citizens and directed training developmentally disable children. She became an administrator of programmes though her parents wished that she would become a neurosurgeon and a concert pianist. After that, she started a business writing firm and became a full-time freelance writer and published works under non-Chinese names among them were Telecommunication and you, a twenty six chapter booklet. Amy Tan prospered as a reporter and editor began to write fiction and then she was taken on as a client by Sandra Dijkstra after Endgame and Between the Trees who encouraged her to complete an entire volume of stories. In 1987, she visited China with her mother and this trip inspired Tan at last to complete the book of stories she promised her agent in only four months who found a publisher for the book called The Joy Luck Club. The Joy Luck Club was published in 1989 and contains 289 pages. It has been translated in seventeen languages, including Chinese and remained eight months on the New York best- seller list. This book is divided into four chapters: Feathers from a thousand Li away, the first chapter, includes “The Joy Luck Club”, “Scar”, “The Red Candle”, and “The Moon Lady”. The 11 second, The twenty six malignant gates has “The Rules of The Game”, “The Voice From The Wall”, “Half and Half”, “Two Kinds”, and “American Translation”. The third bears “Rice Husband”, “Four Directions”, “Without Wood” and “Best Quality”. And the last chapter, Queen mother of the western skies contains “Magpies”, “Waiting Between The Trees”, “Double Face”, and “A Pair of Tickets”. The Joy Luck Club is a story of four Chinese mothers who immigrated to the United States in order to flee their homeland’s war, political repression and poverty and their Chinese American daughters. These two generations of women were struggling to come to terms with their cultural identity. All through the story, Tan shows us China, Chinese American Women and their family’s experience when in China and in America, the relationship and mis relationship between Chinese-Americans (Chinese-born Americans, American-born Chinese) and Americans. Apart from The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan wrote The Kitchen God’s Wife(1991),The Moon Lady and The Siamese Cat: children’s book, The Hundred Secret Senses(1995), The Bones Daughter(2001), The Opposite Fate(2003). Jhumpa LAHIRI, who is an Indian, was born in 1967 in London, England, and raised in Rhode Island. She has travelled several times in India, where both her parents were born and raised. Lahiri received her B.A from Barnard College, and from Boston University, she has received an M.A in Comparative Studies in Literature and Art, and a Ph. D. in Renaissance Studies. She has taught Creative Writing at Boston University and Rhode Island School of Design and has been a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. With all these diplomas, she applied for many jobs, instead of being scholar, she preferred to become a writer. Interpreter Of Maladies is her first book.It is a collection of nine stories set in India and in the United States: “A Temporary Matter”, “When Mr. Pirzada Came To Dine”, “Interpreter Of Maladies”, “A Real Durwan”, “Sexy”, “Mrs Sen’s”, This Blessed House”, “The Treatment Of Bibi Haldar”, and “ The Third And Final Continent”. From this fiction book, she wins the 2000 Pulitzer Prize. In addition to that, she