童話？譚恩美的童書《月亮夫人》與陰陽哲學

Fairy-Tale? Amy Tan’s Children’s Story The Moon Lady and the Yin-Yang Philosophy

華裔美籍作家譚恩美的小說廣為人知，相關研究亦著作頗豐，然而對於其童書的分析卻相當稀少。譚恩美的童書《月亮夫人》取材自她的小說《喜福會》，為何作者從小說中主要的八位女性角色裡特別挑選鶯鶯的故事獨立為童書十足耐人尋味。本篇論文因而企圖從文化、性別與身分認同的觀點來討論《月亮夫人》的獨特性，並探究道家的陰陽哲學在這部作品裡的意義。

 

This article aims to discuss the under-studied children’s book The Moon Lady by Amy Tan through the perspectives of culture, identity and gender. The story of The Moon Lady is relevant to Tan’s debut novel The Joy Luck Club, which narrates the stories of eight women of Chinese ancestry living in the United States. It is, therefore, interesting to consider why Tan especially individualizes Ying-ying’s memory to re-create it into a children’s story. This paper then intends to analyze how The Moon Lady, associated with a Chinese myth and the Mid-Autumn Festival, is unique for its cultural denotation, and how this children’s book is affected by the Chinese Taoist yin-yang philosophy and is significant in terms of gender expectation, cultural transmission and identity formation.