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The Joy Luck Club: Faces
An individual’s culture and history play undeniable roles in the person they are and the person they become. People are products of their environment, and regardless of how someone may feel about their life, their background, or their circumstances, these factors play an important role in their identity. Amy Tan explores the turbulent path to finding one’s identity in The Joy Luck Club, a novel that explores not only the strength of an individual, but the strength of a culture. Lindo Jong, a Chinese immigrant in the novel, describes this phenomenom as her two faces. Lindo believes that one always sacrifices part of oneself by putting on one’s ‘American face’ or one’s ‘Chinese face’. By choosing to wear one of these
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How can two people fully understand the thoughts and emotions of each other if they grew up in completely different environments and generations? The struggle between the mothers and daughters to find common ground and connect is not at the fault of either party, but truly circumstantial. Regardless, the mothers grew up in China, where they practiced traditional cultural activities and values, while their daughters were raised in America with western values. The disconnect is seen in each mother-daughter relationship told in the novel. Jing-Mei Woo, one of the daughters, recalls: “A friend once told me that my mother and I were alike, that we had the same wispy hand gestures, the same girlish laugh and sideways look. When I shyly told my mother his, she seemed insulted and said, “You don’t even know little percent of me! How can you be me?” And she’s right” (14-15). This quote shows how acutely aware both mother and daughter are of the fact that they do not know each other on a deeper level, and the manner in which it is addressed reflects hurt feelings. While it is acknowledged, there remains a sense of sadness and anger at how little they know about each other’s lives and past experiences. Similar feelings surface in Lindo and
Amy Tan 's novel, The Joy Luck Club, explores the relationships and experiences of four Chinese mothers with that of their four Chinese-American daughters. The differences in the upbringing of those women born around the 1920’s in China, and their daughters born in California in the 80’s, is undeniable. The relationships between the two are difficult due to lack of understanding and the considerable amount of barriers that exist between them.
Our mothers have played very valuable roles in making us who we are and what we have become of ourselves. They have been the shoulder we can lean on when there is no one else to turn to. They have been the ones we can count on when there is no one else. They have been the ones who love us for who we are and forgive us when no one else wouldn’t. In Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds,” the character Jing-mei experiences being raised by a mother who has overwhelming expectations for her daughter, which causes Jing-mei to struggle with who she wants to be.
Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club uses much characterization. Each character is portrayed in different yet similar ways. When she was raised, she would do whatever she could to please other people. She even “gave up her life for her parents promise” (49), I the story The Red Candle we get to see how Tan portrays Lindo Jong and how she is brought to life.
Your identity is shaped by your desire to be who you want to be. You choose who you surround yourself with. You decide who you want to become, but in the novel the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Jing-mei’s mother already had her identity planned out whether she likes it or not. According to her mother, “you could be anything you wanted to be in America.” Her standards for her daughter were nothing short of the American dream. She wanted her daughter to be a prodigy, to excel in anything, and at first Jing-mei was just as excited as her mother was. She wasn't sure where her daughter's talents rooted, but she was sure that she reeked of potential. Mrs. Woo tried to push her daughter to become an actress, but she soon found out that will get her nowhere. Then
The mothers and daughters not only experience a generation gap, but since the mothers were born in China and the daughters were born in America, they also experience a certain cultural gap. This leads to miscommunication and misunderstanding on both parts. To the mothers, their Chinese heritage is very meaningful to them and the Americanized daughters don’t always understand this. The daughters get embarrassed by their mothers’ broken English. For instance, at one point Lindo Jong says "But inside I am becoming ashamed. I am ashamed she is ashamed. Because she is my daughter and I am proud of her, and I am her mother and she is not proud of me." (pg. 291). Lindo is hurt because her daughter Waverly, is talking to her like she is a child. Waverly does not do this on purpose, she just has a hard time understanding her mother and her background, like the other daughters in the book.
One type of effect the Chinese mothers’ expectations has in their relationship with their “Americanized” daughter is negative since the mothers are unable to achieve anything. An-Mei Hsu expects her daughter to listen and obey as the young ones do in Chinese culture, but instead receives a rebellious and stubborn daughter, “‘You only have to listen to me.’ And I cried, ‘But Old Mr. Chou listens to you too.’ More than thirty years later, my mother was still trying to make me listen’” (186-187). Instead of the circumstances improving, the mother is never able to achieve anything; her forcing and pushing her daughter to the Chinese culture goes to a waste. They are both similar in this sense because both are stubborn; the daughter learns to be stubborn through American culture and wants to keep herself the way she is, whereas the mother wants to remove this teaching from American culture and does not give u...
The Chinese mothers, so concentrated on the cultures of their own, don't want to realize what is going on around them. They don't want to accept the fact that their daughters are growing up in a culture so different from their own. Lindo Jong, says to her daughter, Waverly- "I once sacrificed my life to keep my parents' promise. This means nothing to you because to you, promises mean nothing. A daughter can promise to come to dinner, but if she has a headache, a traffic jam, if she wants to watch a favorite movie on T.V., she no longer has a promise."(Tan 42) Ying Ying St.Clair remarks- "...because I remained quiet for so long, now my daughter does not hear me. She sits by her fancy swimming pool and hears only her Sony Walkman, her cordless phone, her big, important husband asking her why they have charcoal and no lighter fluid."(Tan 64)
Jing Mei and her mother have a different perspective on so many things. Jing’s mother believes that her daughter should do what she wants the she tells her to do. Jing believes that she should be able to do what she wants and be her own person. Jing’s childhood was destroyed because of her mother’s cultural beliefs. Jing’s mother was domineering, she would give a solution that was impossible to answer or do.
Oftentimes the children of immigrants to the United States lose the sense of cultural background in which their parents had tried so desperately to instill within them. According to Walter Shear, “It is an unseen terror that runs through both the distinct social spectrum experienced by the mothers in China and the lack of such social definition in the daughters’ lives.” This “unseen terror” is portrayed in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club as four Chinese women and their American-born daughters struggle to understand one another’s culture and values. The second-generation women in The Joy Luck Club prove to lose their sense of Chinese values, becoming Americanized.
In the Joy Luck Club, the author Amy Tan, focuses on mother-daughter relationships. She examines the lives of four women who emigrated from China, and the lives of four of their American-born daughters. The mothers: Suyuan Woo, An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-Ying St. Clair had all experienced some life-changing horror before coming to America, and this has forever tainted their perspective on how they want their children raised. The four daughters: Waverly, Lena, Rose, and Jing-Mei are all Americans. Even though they absorb some of the traditions of Chinese culture they are raised in America and American ideals and values. This inability to communicate and the clash between cultures create rifts between mothers and daughters.
Amy Tan, the author of The Joy Luck Club, displays life lessons mothers pass down to their daughters through the character An-mei, while Janice Mirikitani mirrors the morales presented in Tan’s novel through her own work, “For a Daughter Who Leaves”. The Joy Luck Club follows a series of mothers and their daughters and how they perceive and react to the cultural gap between them. An-mei’s story follows her through her life in China and her new life in America. In China, she witnesses the abuse her mother goes through and eventually her mother’s suicide. She does not want her daughter, Rose, to repeat the same mistakes her mother and herself made, so she tries to teach Rose how to live a happy and full life without regrets.
From the beginning of time, mothers and daughters have had their conflicts, tested each other’s patience, and eventually resolved their conflicts. In the story “Two Kinds,” written by Amy Tan, Jing-Mei and her mother are the typical mother-daughter duo that have their fair share of trials. Jing-Mei is an American Chinese Girl who struggles to please her mother by trying to be the “Prodigy” that her mother wishes for. Her mother has great ideas to make her daughter famous with hopes that she would become the best at everything she did. Throughout the story, the mother and daughter display distinct characteristics giving the reader insight of who they are, how they each handle conflict, and helps define how their relationship changes over time.
In life we sometimes experience cultural differences. In The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan shows how mother daughter relationships are affected by these cultural differences. Therefore each of the mothers and daughters has a different view on their Chinese culture.
However, the themes and struggles presented in her fiction as well as her characters represent the experiences of many Asian-American writers and individuals experience and do address their need to construct an identity that includes both Asian and American cultural ideals. Tan's mothers and daughters experience and strive to attain what Asian- Americans such as myself work hard to achieve. Rather than simply presenting situations involving cultural tension. Amy Tan, through oral and mythical connections to the Chinese and American cultures, gives readers a glimpse into an Asian-American mythology, a culture comprised of two separate, often opposing ideals. This is not to say that anyone not of Asian descent can enjoy her fiction. Rather, the mythical element of Tan's novels allows anyone of any culture to connect to her characters, to notice real-life situations in her novels and see how the characters resolve cultural and familial conflicts. In The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife, Amy Tan uses stories from her own history and myth to explore the voices of mothers and daughters of Chinese ancestry. Each woman tells a story indicative of the uniqueness of her voice. In Tan’s fiction, the daughters’ sense of self is intricately linked to an ability to speak and be heard by their mothers. Similarly, the mothers experience growth as they broaden communication lines with their daughters. Until Tan’s women connect as mothers and daughters, they experience strong feelings of isolation, a sense of disenfranchisement and fragmentation. These feelings often are a result of male domination. Tan has made an effective attempt to portray the Chinese mythology and in the next part we will address Tan’s devise of using language through her characters and the conflicts related to distinct languages. She also gives subtle
...ith Jing Mei and her mother, it is compounded by the fact that there are dual nationalities involved as well. Not only did the mother’s good intentions bring about failure and disappointment from Jing Mei, but rooted in her mother’s culture was the belief that children are to be obedient and give respect to their elders. "Only two kinds of daughters.....those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!" (Tan1) is the comment made by her mother when Jing Mei refuses to continue with piano lessons. In the end, this story shows that not only is the mother-daughter relationship intricately complex but is made even more so with cultural and generational differences added to the mix.