Boys Will Be Boys? Subverting Traditional Power Structures in Asian-American Prose

2013

Leaving one’s home country behind and starting a new life on a different continent may also involve being confronted with behaviors and values completely different from the ones that were deemed the only ones back home. This experience is described by the protagonist of the Asian-American author Amy Tan’s story “The Red Candle”, recalling her arrival in California from a small village in China. In her attempt to bridge the gap between the conflicting worlds of “Old East and New West”, the protagonist uses concepts and metaphors that might be transferred and prove valuable in more than one cultural context. In the hierarchy of the culture which is described, a position of power is most of al…