The Power of Love in Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club
In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, Four pairs of mothers and daughters embark on the journey that is life. Each young woman comes to realize how valuable the relationships with their mothers are. As each daughter learns from her mother, she goes through the sometimes-painful process of trying to understand her enigmatic mother. To finally unravel the mystery surrounding their mothers is to understand who they, themselves, really are.
Suyuan Woo started the "Joy Luck Club" the year she left China. She began the club as a relief from the heartache that she and her friends experienced "My mother could sense that the women of these families also had unspeakable tragedies they had left behind in China and hopes they couldn't begin to express in their fragile English" (1Tan 6). Jing-Mei Woo, the daughter of Suyuan, recalls a story told by her mother, "Over the years she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine"(1Tan 7). Jing-Mei comes to realize that the story she thought was a fairy tale was actually an event in her mother's life. As she learned more about her mother's past by her stories of China:" There were things so strange and beautiful you can't possibly imagine them...We were a city of leftovers mixed together"(1Tan 8) she comes to respect her mother. When she faces trials of her own she is able to take her mother's advice. When Jing-Mei is thirty-six her mother dies of a brain aneurysm, her memory of her mother gives her strength, she realizes that her mother felt the same during her life. Suyuan's voice echoes in her head "Can you imagine h...
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Each woman through many trials and tribulations learned who they were and where they came from. No matter what happened they had the love of their mothers. Many lessons were learned and relationships strengthened. Throughout their lives they had one constant: the love of their mothers.
Works Consulted:
Huntley, E. D. Amy Tan: A Critical Companion. Westport: Greenwood P, 1998.
Schell, Orville. "Your Mother is in Your Bones." The New York Times Book Review. 19 March 1989: 3,28.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York: Ivy Books. (1989).
Internet:
Liu, Ping (1997). Adjusting to a New Society: A Study of Educated Chinese Women: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~tdo/ea/chineseWomen.html
Interview with Amy Tan: The Joy Luck Club Lady: http://detnews.com/menu/stories/23098.htm
Jing-mei Woo has to become a member of the Joy Luck Club in place of her mother, Suyuan Woo, who passed away. Before Suyuan's passing Jing-mei does not know much about her mother, as the story continues to develop Jing-mei realizes how much she did not know about her mother and learns more and more new things about her on her journey of finding her sisters. “Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies” (26), this quote is from Suyuan Woo and shows Jing- mei that her mother has a lot of secrets that she does not know about. “Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine” (21). This quote shows how Jing-mei did not know much
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