Yelling at a Brick Wall
The language between a mother and a daughter can create a huge brick wall in their relationship because they have different views on life, and how they should handle it. In the book "The Joy Luck Club," by Amy Tan, a story is told of An-Mei Hus and her daughter Rose Hsu Jordan, who is going though a divorce. An- Mei wants her daughter, Rose, to try and save her marriage. But Rose knows it’s pointless to try and upon that she decides to learn to stick up for her self, get a lawyer, and fight her soon to be ex-husband for the house. The relationship between An-Mei Hsu and Rose Hsu Jordan shows that language is a brick wall, because they don’t understand why wants what they want. Rose doesn’t care to save her marriage; she only wants to get the house. When her mother, An-Mei, wants Rose to fight to save her marriage, because it’s the Chinese way, and how the only way to keep her honor among her family.
An-Mei Hsu was born and raised in China, but not by her mother. Her mother became the concubine of another man when An-Mei’s father had died. So An-Mei and her little brother went to live with there grandmother who they called Popo. At the house in which they lived they were not aloud to talk about, or even speak of there mother and soon enough, An-Mei and her little brother had forgotten her altogether. But Popo becomes very sick, and An-Mei’s mother returns to the home. When she was there she cuts a piece of her arm off and puts it in to soup for Popo. This was to show great respect, and was also a way of trying to cure the sick. "Here is how I came to love me mother. How I saw my own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my bones." (pg40) This is the point where An-Mei is thought about respect and honor. She saw what her mother had done for Popo, and found it in her heart to forgive her and love her again. From then on she wanted to make sure that her daughters would have honor, and respect for the family ways. "The pain you must forget, because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones." (pg41) She saw what her mother take a piece of her own flesh and give it to Popo in order to earn her respect and honor back.
No relationship is ever perfect no matter how great it seems. In the novel The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan, she tells the story of a few mother daughter pairs that are in a group named the Joy Luck Club. The Joy Luck Club is a group of women who come together once a week to play mahjong. The founder of the Joy Luck Club, Suyuan Woo, dies, leaving her daughter Jing-mei to take her place in the club. Her daughter, Jing-mei, receives money from the other members of the club to travel to China in order to find her mother's twin daughters who were left many years ago. In this book you get more of the details of this family and a few more. Amy Tan uses the stories of Jing-mei and Suyuan, Waverly and Jindo, and An-mei and Rose to portray her theme of, mother daughter relationships can be hard at times but they are always worth it in the end.
The Essay written by Amy Tan titled 'Mother Tongue' concludes with her saying, 'I knew I had succeeded where I counted when my mother finished my book and gave her understandable verdict' (39). The essay focuses on the prejudices of Amy and her mother. All her life, Amy's mother has been looked down upon due to the fact that she did not speak proper English. Amy defends her mother's 'Broken' English by the fact that she is Chinese and that the 'Simple' English spoken in her family 'Has become a language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk' (36). Little did she know that she was actually speaking more than one type of English. Amy Tan was successful in providing resourceful information in every aspect. This gave the reader a full understanding of the disadvantages Amy and her mother had with reading and writing. The Essay 'Mother Tongue' truly represents Amy Tan's love and passion for her mother as well as her writing. Finally getting the respect of her critics and lucratively connecting with the reaction her mother had to her book, 'So easy to read' (39). Was writing a book the best way to bond with your own mother? Is it a struggle to always have the urge to fit in? Was it healthy for her to take care of family situations all her life because her mother is unable to speak clear English?
Jing-mei realizes her mother was trying to help her out, but since their personalities clash, Jing-mei first believed her mother was forcing her to play piano. She thought her mother was setting up unrealistic expectations for her, when only she just wanted to see her daughter live the American Dream. She didn’t understand the Chinese way of thinking so she thought her mother was just being strict. Her mother wants her to be a strong, independent American woman. She just wanted her daughter to have all the opportunities she wasn’t able to have in China.
Ann-Mei's mother is forced into concubinage because of her lack of power as a women. She becomes the third wife. As a third wife she maintains very little status in the home of Wu Tsing. Ann-Mei's family disowns her mother because by becoming a third wife she has brought shame to her family. "When I was a young girl in China, my grandmother told me my mother was a ghost". Ann-Mei is told to forget about her mother and move on in her life. The fact that Ann-Mei is told to forget her mother because she has become something she could not control, is preposterous. She was raped and forced into concubinage. The lack of appreciation for a female causes this feeling of shame for the Mei family. Since rape and polygamy is accepted in China, it makes it appear that what Ann-Mei's mother has done is wrong, and what Wu Tsing did was right or normal.
Our mothers have played very valuable roles in making us who a we are and what we have become of ourselves. They have been the shoulder we can lean on when there was no one else to turn to. They have been the ones we can count on when there was no one else. They have been the ones who love of 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, causes Jing-mei to struggle with who she wants to be. “Only two kind of daughters,” “Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!”(476). When a mother pushes her daughter to hard the daughter rebels, but realizes in the end that their mothers only wanted the best for them and had their best interest at heart.
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)
June-May fulfills her mother’s name and life goal, her long-cherished wish. She finally meets her twin sisters and in an essence fulfills and reunites her mother with her daughter through her. For when they are all together they are one; they are their mother. It is here that June-May fulfills the family portion of her Chinese culture of family. In addition, she fully embraces herself as Chinese. She realizes that family is made out of love and that family is the key to being Chinese. “And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.” (Tan 159). Finally, her mother’s life burden is lifted and June-May’s doubts of being Chinese are set aside or as she says “After all these years, it can finally be let go,” (Tan 159).
In their articles, Chang Rae-Lee and Amy Tan establish a profound ethos by utilizing examples of the effects their mother-daughter/mother-son relationships have had on their language and writing. Lee’s "Mute in an English-Only World" illustrates his maturity as a writer due to his mother’s influence on growth in respect. Tan, in "Mother Tongue," explains how her mother changed her writing by first changing her conception of language. In any situation, the ethos a writer brings to an argument is crucial to the success in connecting with the audience; naturally a writer wants to present himself/herself as reliable and credible (Lunsford 308). Lee and Tan, both of stereotypical immigrant background, use their memories of deceased mothers to build credibility in their respective articles.
Throughout Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, the reader can see the difficulites in the mother-daughter relationships. The mothers came to America from China hoping to give their daughters better lives than what they had. In China, women were “to be obedient, to honor one’s parents, one’s husband, and to try to please him and his family,” (Chinese-American Women in American Culture). They were not expected to have their own will and to make their own way through life. These mothers did not want this for their children so they thought that in America “nobody [would] say her worth [was] measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch…nobody [would] look down on her…” (3). To represent everything that was hoped for in their daughters, the mothers wanted them to have a “swan- a creature that became more than what was hoped for,” (3). This swan was all of the mothers’ good intentions. However, when they got to America, the swan was taken away and all she had left was one feather.
In The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan explores mother-daughter relationships, and at a lower level, relationships between friends, lovers, and even enemies. The mother-daughter relationships are most likely different aspects of Tan's relationship with her mother, and perhaps some parts are entirely figments of her imagination. In this book, she presents the conflicting views and the stories of both sides, providing the reader--and ultimately, the characters--with an understanding of the mentalities of both mother and daughter, and why each one is the way she is.
Tan was born to a pair of Chinese immigrants. Her mother understood English extremely well, but the English she spoke was “broken.”(36) Many people not familiar with her way of speaking found it very difficult to understand her. As a result of this, Tan would have to pretend to be her mother, and she called people up to yell at them while her mother stood behind her and prompted her. This caused Tan to be ashamed of her mother throughout her youth, but as she grew, she realized that the language she shares with her mother is a “language of intimacy” (36) that she even uses when speaking with her husband.
No matter the circumstances they are facing or the state in life the fourth mothers are in, they always find a way to celebrate and enjoy the most out of life through their Joy Luck Club, and every small custom brings them closer to home, even if they are thousands of miles away. To the mothers in the novel particularly, a party is not just a time of relaxation and relief to let loose the stress life has given them, but a way of bonding and strengthening connections with the families they have and the friendships they have formed over the years. Hosted in the Hsus’ house, Jing-Mei remarks how “eating is not a gracious event here. It’s as though everybody had been starving.. They are not like the ladies of Kweilin...who..savoured their food with a certain detached delicacy.” (20-21) The mention of Kweilin leads back to how the mothers in the past had started their tradition of the Joy Luck Club of feasting on food lavishly and loudly playing mahjong while war erupted by their doorsteps started as a way of making the most out of what they have, cherishing friendships and the fortunate things they have received in their lives even when tragedy strikes.
Some people say that the love between a mother and her daughter is forever; but what about the understanding? In the case of Waverly Jong and her mother in the story “Rules of the Game,” by Amy Tan, there is much miscommunication and misunderstanding. The story is set in mid-1950’s Chinatown and as the story opens, it is Christmas time. “Rules of the Game” is the telling of how a little girl learns to be more independent but falls into conflict with her mother along the way and becomes a type of trophy. Amy Tan uses elements such as character, symbolism, and setting to portray the themes of struggle between two cultures and independence perfectly in “Rules of the Game.”
The problem started with her mother because she spoke broken English. She had a hard time during her life when she moved to the US because she couldn’t speak English well. The first reason was mixed the English with Chinese, and they used code. The family didn’t practice the language. On one day Amy Tan 's mother exposed to a lot of attitude and that’s bothering her because when she spoke to the native speaker some people understood 50% and the other did not understand her. Since she wants to order something they didn’t give her a nice service, or tried to ignore her, but Amy Tan always tried to fix the problem for her mother because she can speak the English clearly. Amy Tan 's mother felt depressing and Her daughter decided to make her mother glad, so she made a huge deal for her mother because she made her mother tried to speak English by explaining the English words to Chinese, and that’s made the English for her mother more easily just to be in touched with the American people. Even Amy Tan 's mother was struggling with English, but she plain in her life goal that’s mean nothing impossible to do it, and everything from learning could be possible. If anyone would something they
...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.