From Cross-cultural and Intercultural to Transcultural: Mise en Abyme in Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter

Abstract

Abstract This article explores how Amy Tan employs the mise en abyme principle in her transgenerational and transcultural novel The Bonesetter’s Daughter. Mise en abyme is defined in this literary analysis as an internal duplication of a literary work or its part, as a result of which the whole incorporates a reflection of itself, and in turn the reflection includes the whole. This novel’s key theme that interdependence is a fundamental characteristic of human existence is bolstered by numerous recursive textual tactics, which serve as mirrors, linking various narrative sequences. This article demonstrates that in Tan’s novel, transcultural textuality and transcultural consciousness that produces it are metaphorically represented as mise en abyme spaces. I argue that the mise en abyme principle also encourages a transcultural reading, simultaneously appealing to the Western postmodern style and the Taoist idea of the interdependence between the macrocosm and microcosm. The Bonesetter’s Daughter’s mise en abyme cannot be limited to a literary device, as it turns out to serve as a textual embodiment of multilayered transnational experiences which allow the author, characters and readers to transcend national borders. The article proves that the novel’s mise en abyme is constructed according to the principle of cultural transgression. The grandmother’s Chinese manuscript was written without any intercultural intention, the mother’s manuscript that includes it was created as a way to establish intercultural communication with the American daughter, whose novel in turn, incorporating the stories of her mother and grandmother, represents a transcultural narrative.