1. How would you describe the relationship between Pearl and
Winnie?
2. Follow-up to Question 1: Pearl thinks of "the enormous
distance that separates" her from her mother, preventing them from
sharing "the most important matters" of their lives. She asks, "How did
this happen?" By the novel's end, can she answer that question? Can you
answer it?
3. Follow-up to Question 2: What role does the secret box play in
keeping mother and daughter at bay? How do the misunderstandings
continue to pile up over the years?
4. Talk about the corrosive effects of secrets. Consider that keeping
secrets is ironic: withholding information is meant to protect either
the secret-keeper or someone who might be hurt or angered by the
knowledge — yet it frequently ends up harming both parties. What makes
secrets so insidious? Think of the secrets you have keep ... or were
once kept from you.
5. What is Helen's role in the novel? What is her relationship with
Winnie and with Pearl? Consider that she is a link between past and
present and between mother and daughter. Why does Helen decide to reveal
Winnie's secrets? Is she right to so?
6. What is the symbolic significance of cleaning and sweeping in the
novel, in particular when Helen tells Winnie that she is going to reveal
Winnie's secrets?
7. What affect did the departure of her mother have on Winnie (then
called Jiang Weili) in both the immediate aftermath and for decades
later?
8. Follow-up to Question 7: Talk about the symbolic/psychological
significance of Winnie's attempt to clean her mother's portrait, only to
wipe off half of her mother's face. How does that act of erasure
parallel Winnie's memory of her mother?
9. In what way does Winnie's history — as well as the idiomatic language
and quirkiness of the characters — resemble the old folktale of the
Kitchen God's Wife …and why might Amy Tan have decided to use it as the
novel's title?
10. Straddling two cultures is an important motif in Tan's novel. How
are both Winnie and Pearl affected by "foreign" influences — one in
China and the other, years later, in America?
