The aim of this study is to discuss anxiety and identity issues referring to ethnic roots and heritage in Americanized life in Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter. To express ethnic anxiety and identity, Amy Tan, a Chinese American writer, uses different stories of different characters mainly based on the mother and daughter relationship rather than focusing upon one story in her fiction. The tradition of storytelling is important for ethnic writers in order to attain their ethnic identity since stories enable those- who are not able to experience past- learn their culture, heritage and past.
This study dwells on how the totality of individuality is split due to ethnic anxiety and how a diasporic mother functions to restore that totality by making her daughter understand her worth and reconcile with her Chinese culture and ethnic identity. The connection between mother and daughter is important to lessen ethnic anxiety. Mother functions as a transmission of heritage and culture and daughter reproduces culture in the light of mother.
Keywords: Ethnic, Anxiety, Identity, Heritage, Culture, Amy Tan, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Mother, Daughter.