Amy Tan’s novel The Kitchen God’s Wife, like many of her works, celebrates the mother-daughter relationship while simultaneously showing its challenges. Andrea O’Reilly has coined the term maternal theory to categorize scholarship that analyzes experiences of mothering, especially considering its challenges due to dominant culture’s high expectations of motherhood. One can apply maternal theory to Tan’s work; however, she works with themes that often differ from those featuring European and American cultural traditions. Adrienne Rich, in her influential work Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, argues that the mother-daughter relationship tends to be negatively portrayed. In her updated introduction to Of Woman Born, Rich admits that she essentially applied characteristics she observed in Western cultures to that of all races, eliding significant differences (xxiv–xxv.) In her updated preface, Rich acknowledges, “I was led to generalize that ‘the cathexis between mother and daughter’ was endangered always and everywhere. A consideration of American Indian, African, and Afro American myth and philosophy might have suggested other patterns” (xxv). Though Rich does not reference Asian American culture, Tan’s work is one that suggests other patterns. Tan challenges the stereotypes and limited views of Western cultures regarding working mothers, resulting in a positive portrayal of working mothers and a restored mother-daughter relationship.

In The Kitchen God’s Wife, Tan celebrates her mother figure as a working mother. This differs from representations of mothers described by Rich who suffer from mother-guilt for a variety of reasons, one being the failure to live up to the stay-at-home mother model. Patricia Hill Collins argues, “Since work and family have rarely functioned as dichotomous spheres for women of color, examining racial ethnic women’s experiences reveals how these two spheres actually are interwoven” (46). Mother-guilt occurs for a variety of reasons in Western cultures, but a prominent factor is a working mother’s failure to apply “intensive mothering,” which is Sharon Hays’ widely adopted term for a woman’s identity largely centering on her role as an ever-present, nurturing, and unselfish mother and which is similar to what Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels call the “new momism.” Yet, in her text, Tan celebrates women and mother figures as working mothers. Rich speaks of working women experiencing “anxiety, guilt, uncertainty” and goes on to say, “The image of the mother in the home, however unrealistic, has haunted and reproached the lives of wage-earning mothers” (52). However, claims like this do not apply well to Tan’s work (nor to the works of many minority authors who write about mothers and mother-daughter relationships). Emily Greenman claims, “[P]articipating in full-time paid work may not be perceived as incompatible with fulfilling the role of a ‘good mother’ among Asian Americans to the same extent as among Whites” (43). Recognizing cultural differences regarding expectations of women’s roles are important so that readers can make accurate observations rather than sweeping statements that are, in fact, only focused on dominant culture.

Tan’s text The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991), which is set contemporaneously, is the story of a mother, Winnie Louie, and her daughter, Pearl Louie Brandt, and their reconciliation through the power of storytelling. The mother and daughter live in San Jose, California, and for most of Pearl’s life, she and her mother have had a strained relationship. As Pearl says, “And whenever I’m with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines” (16). At the onset of the novel, Winnie has not disclosed many details of her past life in China, including her oppressive and abusive first marriage and the loss of most of her children from this marriage, out of her shame and fear of being misunderstood by her daughter. One of the central secrets of their relationship is that Pearl’s biological father is Winnie’s first husband. Pearl, on the other hand, has not revealed to her mother that she has been diagnosed with and suffers from multiple sclerosis. It is only due to the prodding of Helen, a close family friend who threatens to tell each woman’s secrets to the other if they do not divulge the secrets themselves, that both mother and daughter open up to one another. The bulk of the text consists of Winnie’s first-person account of her life in China, set during World War II. For most of the text, Winnie narrates the story of her life while Pearl listens.

Tan does not point to Winnie’s role as a working mother as any sort of significant factor in the tension between Winnie and Pearl. Rather, Tan attributes the issues between them as stemming directly from Pearl not understanding the traditional expectations in “old” China and the ways in which these have both worn down and affected her mother and Winnie’s unwillingness to teach Pearl about her past, for fear of her being viewed negatively. Winnie’s identity as both a Chinese woman in her younger years as well as her current identity as a Chinese American creates a complicated persona. Winnie desires for Pearl to assimilate into American culture, which Pearl does, even marrying a white American and raising her daughters in a typical American manner, valuing self-sufficiency and focusing little on Chinese cultural heritage. Yet, this creates a chasm between mother and daughter. Winnie perceives her daughter as an American in a way that Winnie realizes she is not. At one point, she references Pearl’s “American mind” and contrasts this with her own, which she does not define as American (313). Psychologist Paula Caplan comments on the complicated mother-daughter relationship of Chinese Americans: “For Chinese-American mothers also, negotiating identity is a significant task. . . . They come by choice, with goals, and often with a strong impulse to assimilate or at least conform. They encourage their children to learn American ways to secure their advancement, at the same time trying to retain for them what they value in their Chinese heritage” (30). For Tan, the problematics of the mother-daughter relationship is not within Chinese cultural expectations of motherhood but rather within the complexities of straddling cultures.

Rich recognizes the scapegoating of mothers, “Easier by far to hate and reject a mother outright than to see beyond her to the forces acting upon her” (235). Although there is clearly tension within Winnie and Pearl’s relationship, Tan avoids minimizing their struggles to stereotypical mother-daughter dynamics and points out the heavy strain that wartime trauma, immigration, and assimilation have had. Mother-blame does exist in the story. Winnie says to Pearl, “I didn’t tell you about my past, and still you thought I was a bad mother. If I had told you—then it would be even worse” (398). Yet, the struggles are amplified from generational differences associated with being or not being immigrants and degrees of acculturation rather than culturally engrained beliefs about mothers. As Linda L. Lindsey emphasizes, “When children become more ‘Americanized,’ intergenerational conflicts increase” (262). As Pearl has lived only in America, she is even more Americanized and cannot relate to her mother in certain ways.

Although Tan’s story does include a strained mother-daughter relationship, the purpose of the novel, rather than condemning the mother, seems to be for her daughter to understand her. Part of this understanding takes place through viewing Winnie’s role as a working mother objectively, rather than automatically equating this with negative connotations. Tan emphasizes the multiplicity of roles women embody, rather than being tied down by a label, by allowing Winnie to tell of herself as she perceives herself, both before and after she becomes a mother. A. M. Marie Booth Foster says that The Kitchen God’s Wife emphasizes “balancing hyphenation and the roles of daughter, wife, mother, sister, career woman” (96). Winnie’s role as a working mother is a relatively peripheral detail to the overall story line. Tan identifies Winnie’s profession and includes it in the story line but does not portray Winnie’s occupation as something that has singularly defined her relationship with her daughter.

Although Anglo Americans tend to view themselves as progressive compared to Asians in terms of gender roles, such is not the case concerning agency in motherhood. Wendy Ho observes, “Contrary to Eurocentric imperialist representations, Chinese and Chinese American women have maintained a level of power in their families as well as in their social, cultural, and political affiliations” (34). One of the central ways that women possess power in the family is through the mother role. When daughters recognize that society views their mother’s role positively and that their mother also views her own role positively, they are more likely to do the same and to seek interaction rather than separation with their mother, seeing the possibilities within identification. O’Reilly warns of the problems that occur when mothers are not valued, “This ambivalence about maternal power, along with fear of the maternal, mother-blame, cultural devaluation of motherhood and matraphobia, distance daughters from their mothers and scripts the relationship of mother and daughters as one of disconnection and estrangement” (“Across” 78). Though Pearl and Winnie do experience some of this estrangement, they are ultimately able to find and share the truth about themselves and each other.

Winnie’s joining the workforce may allude to modern Chinese conceptions of working women. In its more recent history, China has pushed toward having women in the workforce. Lindsey explains, “China’s goal to increase women’s employment is linked to the argument that when women gain economically, they also gain in the family” (172). Thus, while during the 1950s the United States strongly endorsed the housewife image, China supported working women. This ideology is one that would have influenced recent immigrants. However, although the older and wiser Winnie who greets readers at the opening of the book appears to have no working mother anxieties or regrets and seems to have passed this confidence onto Pearl, Tan does show Winnie’s growth from a traditional to modern woman in reference to her views on women’s roles. As China’s acceptance of working mothers grew from a respect for womanhood in general, so Winnie’s attitude toward working mothers stems from a valuing of female agency.

Early on, Winnie perceives nontraditional women as negative, “Hulan was telling me there was a Chinese schoolteacher who went crazy, left her husband, and now wanted to sleep with the American air force, everyone, married or not, young or old, it didn’t matter” (300). At that time, Winnie and Hulan/Helen, easily accept the story of a working woman as an unscrupulous one. Winnie goes on to label “crazy Chinese girls” as unvirtuous women, often in association with their deviation from traditional roles, “university students, teachers, nurses, and others” (300). However, as Winnie becomes more and more desperate in her extremely patriarchal marriage, in which her husband abuses her and her children, she simultaneously develops a more progressive stance on the roles of women. When Winnie seeks to escape her marriage, she sees the strength of working women who have left their husbands: “The other women were coming home for lunch, one at a time, from their different workplaces. One tutored students in French. Another worked in a shoe factory. Another made straw brooms and sold them on the street. They came from many different backgrounds” (355). Thus, before Winnie ever arrives in the United States and becomes a working mother, she first changes her mind about the place women should occupy. Once she accepts their right to be in the public sphere, she sees no contradiction with women occupying the public sphere even if they have children.

Winnie also positively views a widowed working mother, whom she references as Beautiful Betty. Betty first holds an office job as a telegram operator and later works as a seamstress to provide for herself and her son. Winnie explains how she even begins to emulate Betty’s attitude: “That’s how Wan Betty was, always speaking honestly. . . And soon, I found myself talking the same way” (209). Betty’s experiences as a working mother influences the agency she exhibits through her speech, which serves as a positive example for Winnie and the similar route she will eventually follow as a widowed working mother. Judith Caesar notes that one can misread The Kitchen God’s Wife as a glorification of American female agency over Chinese female subjectivity: “[O]ne can see the novel as a rather smug indictment of the misery of women in traditional Chinese society in contrast to American society’s enlightened feminism” (38). However, the fact that Winnie changes her viewpoint about women’s place in society and specifically the workforce before entering the United States shows that Tan complicates Western views of the East as unprogressive regarding female autonomy.

Though Winnie comes to associate female agency with women asserting themselves as workers even before she has children, she does not work outside the home during her children’s early years. It is after the untimely death of her second husband, Jimmy, when Pearl is fourteen, that Winnie opens a flower shop with her close friend Helen. Pearl perceives her mother’s role as a worker positively, saying, “I suppose in some way, the flower shop became the dream that would replace the disasters” (14). She sees the flower shop as a symbol of hope and strength for her mother. In her adulthood, Pearl is critical of the old-fashioned style of the flower shop but respects the work her mother does. Upon being shown some of Winnie’s flower arrangements, Pearl comments, “I am stunned by how much hard work this represents” (23). Pearl also recognizes that her mother has consistently taken pride in her work when she comments, “And now she steers me toward her real pride and joy. . . . My mother has always been very proud of those red banners” (22–23). Though Winnie finds satisfaction in doing her job well, Pearl does not feel she has to (or had to during her adolescence) compete with the work for her mother’s attention. She understands the benefit of her mother’s hard work for their family. Min Zhou and Jennifer Lee confirm, “Asian immigrant parents pass onto their children the cultural belief that increased effort leads to more positive outcomes” (8321). Pearl recognizes her mother’s strong work ethic as something positive and has learned over the years to connect the self-sufficiency and creative expression employment allows with female agency.

Tan shows that not only is Winnie personally successful by finding satisfaction in her work and having her daughter recognize the value in her work but also that Winnie is professionally successful in having built up and maintained a lucrative business. Part of the reason Winnie is so proud of her banners is that she designs them herself rather than copying a prescribed format, “She doesn’t write the typical congratulatory sayings. . . All the sayings, written in gold Chinese characters, are of her own inspiration, her thoughts about life and death, luck and hope” (23). Winnie finds purpose in her work and takes advantage of ways to bring her creativity into it; the decisions she makes ensure financial security, but equally important, the flower shop serves as a mainstay of the Chinese immigrant community. Pearl comments, “My mother claims these banners are the reasons why Ding Ho Flower Shop has had success flowing through its doors all these years. By success, I suppose she means that the same people over the last twenty-five years keep coming back” (23). Pearl’s affirmatively viewing her mother’s commitment to her work is influenced by the proof of the customers’ satisfaction and loyalty, which equates into economic security for Winnie. Tan avoids pointing to Winnie’s work as a source of tension between herself and her daughter. Although Pearl does not understand her mother’s movement toward agency until the end of the novel, her mother’s positive example as a worker initiates a respect that blossoms into Pearl learning how to positively view her mother, which is necessary in order for Pearl’s own sense of self to fully develop.

Winnie is a traditional, stay-at-home mother until Jimmy’s death propels her into the workforce, which is different compared to a mother who works along with having a working spouse. However, this does not mean that Tan only endorses mothers working if there is no male provider or if their children are no longer young. It likely reflects the specifics of Winnie’s circumstances at that time. D’Vera Cohn speculates that part of the reason so many Asian American mothers, by way of comparison to other cultural groups, do not work is due to their status as immigrants (17). Even if a mother would like to work, she may not have the necessary paperwork or language acquisition to do so. (Additionally, in 2020 and 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic has negatively impacted Asian American women’s employment status—indeed, it negatively impacted women’s employment status across cultures and classes.) Yet, for some women, economic opportunity inspires immigration. Judy Yung explains that twentieth-century Chinese women relocated to the United States due to their valued role as workers, “They now had an economic role to play in the urban economy or in their husbands’ small businesses” (57). Winnie’s entering the workforce when Pearl is fourteen, shortly following Jimmy’s death, should not solely be interpreted as a necessity for Winnie to support herself and her family, as Jimmy would likely have had life insurance and assets, especially as a war veteran. Neither should it be interpreted as occurring because Winnie feels she is past the intensive years of mothering small children when she is most needed at home. At the time coinciding with Jimmy’s death, Winnie’s confidence as an American, with greater English language acquisition and familiarity with American culture, might have propelled her into the workforce regardless of whether she became a widow. According to a Pew Research Study, 63 percent of Asian American mothers worked outside the home around the time period of Tan’s novel (Cohn 1). Winnie likely joins the workforce after acclimating to American culture and does not appear to feel that she forfeits her role as a good mother in doing so, which may have positively impacted her relationship with her children. Pearl realizes her mother desires to provide and care for her but would not have the pressure of believing that her mother structures her identity, as a worker or otherwise, off her.

Although Tan positively portrays working women, specifically mothers, she also includes a scene in which Winnie expresses distaste for women working as domestics. Of the hired mourners at a funeral, Winnie says to Pearl, “Maybe these ladies can do two or three funerals every day. . . earn a few dollars. Good living that way. Better than cleaning houses” (43). It is important to note that Winnie’s negative reaction to women cleaning houses, or at least positing staged mourning as superior to housecleaning, is tied to the work’s low status rather than Winnie endorsing a belief that women should not work outside the home. Perhaps because working as a domestic has often been one of the few options for women of color, Winnie seems to believe that working as a domestic is undesirable work. Ji-Yeon Yuh explains how Asian American immigrants fill what is sometimes called an hourglass economy, in which well-educated Asian immigrants fill jobs of highly trained professionals at the top of the glass, but uneducated Asian immigrants occupy the blue-collar jobs at the bottom of the glass. For those at the bottom, contrary to the idea embodied by the American dream, there is little chance of upward mobility. “They become janitors,” Yuh observes, “house cleaners, cooks, dishwashers, and nannies—such ‘woman’s work’ being increasingly done by hired help as more and more middle-class women of all ethnic backgrounds join the labor force” (226). Winnie’s positioning of certain types of work above others may be influenced by the type of work that has typically been made available to Asian Americans. The mourners are old women, beyond the time of raising a young family, but Winnie’s beliefs about women workers in general extend specifically to her ideas about working mothers and her own experiences as a working mother. She finds no issue with women working; it is only when they must work menial jobs for subpar pay that she opposes it.

The positive value of working mothers is apparent in Tan’s depiction of Winnie’s job and Winnie’s perceptions of other women’s jobs, along with the way she has influenced Pearl to not only work but to also pursue an advantageous career. However, due to their strained relationship, Pearl doubts that her mother supports her current position “as a speech and language clinician” (15). But, the issue is not if she should work, as Winnie respects that Pearl has decided to have a career, but rather what type of work she should do, what the best opportunity might be. Pearl says, “And while I was basically happy with the job, I secretly worried that I had missed a better opportunity. My mother had put those thoughts in my head” (15). Though Pearl fears she has not lived up to her mother’s expectations, this quote exemplifies that her mother endorses her role as a working mother. Pearl has two young daughters, Tessa and Cleo, whom she and her husband co-parent in addition to both holding careers. In actuality, Winnie values her daughter’s work. Rather than being critical of Pearl’s job, Winnie feels doubtful of her own ability to properly interact with Pearl’s professional life: “But Pearl has a good job, a speech therapist for retarded children, although she told me never to say that. . . . I asked her to tell me what she did again and she wrote it down. . . . I practiced saying this many, many times. I still have those words in my purse. I still can’t say them. So now maybe Pearl thinks I’m retarded, too” (82). The term “retarded” is no longer in use as a clinical term and is considered offensive. Pearl recognizes changing perceptions related to language. Winnie does not and continues to use the word in its outdated form, meaning delayed in physical or mental development, rather than as an offensive slur suggesting stupidity. Although Winnie is a successful business owner, she feels uneducated in comparison with her daughter. Nevertheless, readers can infer that Pearl’s desire to work and hold a job that others deem desirable is something her mother has modeled.

Mary Blair-Loy explains that because certain cultures place great value on providing their children with a high-quality education, they are more willing to accept the role of working mothers as it allows for additional income to be used for their children’s education, which they equate with eventual success. This is in contrast to values described by Blair-Loy: “The schema of devotion to the family is a white and middle-class cultural model, rooted in the nineteenth century and flowering in the postwar baby boom era, specifying that it is desirable and worthwhile for women to spend most of their adult lives intensively caring for their families” (19). Winnie’s entrance into the workforce may have increased the likelihood of Pearl’s employment position as a speech therapist. Not only has Winnie provided for Pearl financially, making her ability to attend college and graduate school more probable, but she has also positively modeled the possibility of a working mother.

Similar to her mother, Pearl does not appear to suffer from any type of guilt as a working mother. She and her husband recognize their need to be apart from their children at times. Winnie often babysits her grandchildren. Greenman identifies nearby grandparents providing childcare as normative in Asian American culture (44). Thus, Pearl’s leaving her children with Winnie suggests the freedom she feels as a mother and the acceptance of sharing parental responsibilities with close family members. Pearl says, “This [room] is where they [Pearl’s daughters] always stay whenever Phil and I go away for a medical convention. Actually, sometimes we just say it’s a medical convention, and then we go back home and do all the household chores we aren’t able to finish when the children are around” (16). Even though she is not consistently with her girls all day, Pearl is not anxious about being away from them on the weekends either. Pearl seems to have little mother-blame and guilt to contend with, supporting Ivana Brown’s claim that “maternal ambivalence is largely socially and culturally based” (136).

Pearl’s lack of ambivalence over whether she is a good mother is, arguably, tied to her upbringing in which being a good mother did not require constant parent/child contact. She knows that working mothers can produce well-adjusted, prosperous adults and feels confident that raising her daughters similarly to the way she was raised is a good decision. Pearl received and passes on the benefits of working mothers without being weighed down by the mother-guilt Western women often experience. Tan presents both Winnie and Pearl, who both provide financial security and offer a strong role model of independence to their children, as good mothers not in spite of their roles as working mothers but potentially because of their roles as working mothers.

Tan’s ending continues to veer from ideologies typical of the Western mother-daughter relationship. Although Winnie and Pearl’s relationship is not perfect due to issues tied to Americanization, acculturation, and past trauma, Tan ends her piece optimistically with the workings of a repaired relationship already underway. Tan offers the hope of restoration between Winnie and Pearl as each opens up to the other and shares her secrets. The novel’s concluding sentence reads, “But see how fast the smoke rises—oh, even faster when we laugh, lifting our hopes, higher and higher” (415). Rather than leaving readers viewing the mother negatively, Tan clearly presents Winnie’s sharing her past as the catalyst for a positive mother-daughter bond. E.D. Huntley says, “Winnie’s voice is that of the survivor, but it is also the voice of a mother who is compelled to share the story of her life with her daughter to give that daughter the strength she needs to confront the problems that threaten to overwhelm her existence” (84). Tan resists portraying the mother-daughter relationship as irreparable, a theme Elizabeth Bourque Johnson analyzes, “When white middle-class mothers are the subjects, it is usually in the context of a crisis or tragedy” (33). Tan, in contrast, provides an ending that is far from tragic. In addition to restoring Winnie and Pearl’s relationship, Tan also shows that this theme of respecting the mother and one’s relationship with her is passed on to Pearl’s daughters. At a family event where Pearl’s daughter Tessa questions the attire of someone, calling her weird, Winnie decides to capitalize on the moment by giving it didactic significance. She responds to her granddaughter, “She is weird because she did not listen to her mother” (404). Rather than belittling the statement, Pearl tells how her husband affirms the mother-daughter bond, “‘It’s true,’ says Phil. ‘Look at your mother. She listened to Habu. Now she’s not so weird.’ Tessa regards me with new respect” (404). Though done in a light-hearted manner, this scene shows not only the bonding that takes place between Winnie and Pearl once their secrets have been shared but also the way this legacy of honoring the mother-daughter relationship is conscientiously passed on to the next generation.

By considering the maternal perspective in The Kitchen God’s Wife, my goal is not to pit one culture against another but rather to show that the mother-daughter relationship can be positive, that working mothers can be effective and empowered, and that authors like Amy Tan offer counter cultural models of how mothers can be good role models to their daughters through their roles as wage earners. About The Kitchen God’s Wife, Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong notes, “The white feminist reading public appears to have an unusually keen appetite for mother-daughter stories by and about people of color” (52). I would argue that white women, myself included, are tired of the stories of bad mother-daughter relationships they see in dominant culture and are drawn to the idea of strong and/or renewed mother-daughter relationships. Rich speaks of “courageous mothering” as the most treasured gift a mother can give to her daughter (246). “The quality of the mother’s life—however embattled and unprotected—is her primary bequest to her daughter, because [she] . . . is demonstrating to her daughter that these possibilities exist” (Rich, 247). The Kitchen God’s Wife, as well as most of Tan’s novels, celebrates female agency through courageous mothers passing the best of themselves onto their daughters through sacrifice and example. Yet, Tan’s goal is to tell stories rather than to teach ideologies or present her work as a model for all Asian American thought. In fact, in her essay “Required Reading and Other Dangerous Subjects,” she insists, “I write for myself,” rather than targeting any specific audience or agenda (5). However, any good storyteller conveys a message, and by applying a maternal theory of working mothers to Tan’s work, her message of women’s strength and the beauty of the mother-daughter relationship can benefit all readers.