The Significance of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club
In her novel The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan tells of the lives of four Chinese immigrant mothers, their hopes, their dreams and the way each of their daughters feel about their mother's lives. Mother-daughter relationships are the basis for the entire story. Tan shows the hardships each mother experiences as a child and young adult, and how they all want better lives for their daughters. She shows the struggles between the mothers and the daughters; these struggles result from many different things, from the cultural gap, to dreams and goals that may have been set too high. Each daughter knows her mother means well, but this does not make the battles any easier. Through careful details Amy Tan shows readers the significance of each of the four mother-daughter relationships in the novel, how each daughter is slowly but surely becoming her mother.
Even though Suyuan Woo is not alive her story is told through her daughter, Jing-mei “June” Woo. In the beginning of the novel readers witness June realizing how little she really knows about her mother and her heritage when she joins the other members of the club her mother founded called Joy Luck. Jing-mei struggles with the division between who she is and who her mother wants her to be. ""Only two kinds of daughters." She shouted in Chinese. "Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!" Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter."" (153) Suyuan yells this when Jing-mei refuses to practice the piano after her embarrassing performance in the talent show. She wants her mother to realize that she doesn't have to be a genius to be special, but Suyuan do...
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...y knew that in the U.S. children would be able to choose whom they married and which career they wanted to pursue. Each mother had wanted to tell her children the events she had endured but did not feel the children would appreciate the stories for their full value. For many years, the mothers did not tell their daughters their stories until they were sure that their wayward offspring would listen, and by then, it is almost too late to make them understand their heritage that their mothers left behind, long ago, when they left China. The mothers knew their children must be old enough to understand what the meaning of their travels to the United States meant to them. They came to this country with many hopes and dreams, not only for themselves but for the children they would soon raise.
Works Cited
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York: Random House, 1989.
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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When Jefferson was elected president adjustments had to be made to the economy and new acts had to be composed in an effort to the United States safe. When Jefferson first became president he had no intentions of remodeling the government to make it into a republican government. Jefferson made small reforms to the government so that both the republicans and federalists could coexist amiably. A small reform that Jefferson created was removing the excise tax. Hamilton had put the tax in place to help lower national debt. But Jefferson viewed that it only bred bureaucrats and put an unnecessary burden upon the farmers. By removing the excise tax it cost the federal government about a million dollars a year. Other than the excise tax, Jefferson kept the Hamiltonian system intact. After the Incident on the U.S. frigate, the Chesapeake the american people were unified in their outrage a...
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In The Joy Luck Club, the novel traces the fate of the four mothers-Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair-and their four daughters-June Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong, and Lena St. Clair. Through the experiences that these characters go through, they become women. The mothers all fled China in the 1940's and they all retain much of their heritage. Their heritage focuses on what is means to be a female, but more importantly what it means to be an Asian female.
The War of 1812 was the result of ongoing political, diplomatic, and economic problems with the British and French, as well as expansionist/territorial issues with the Native American populations along the Western regions of the United States.
When analyzing the Joy Luck club it is important to consider the life of the author. It is apparent after studying both The Joy Luck Club and Amy Tan that there are some incredible similarities among the two, particularly the story of mother Suyuan-Woo and her daughter Jing-Mei Woo. Suyuan is a main character and plays an extremely important role in the novel even though she passed away. She created the Joy Luck club years ago and is the main reason why this tight kit family exists today. Suyuan decided to create the Joy Luck club during a ve...
The War of 1812 has often been called America’s forgotten war. Wedged between the Revolutionary and Civil War, its causes, battles, and consequences are unknown to most Americans. The major causes of the War of 1812 were a series of economic revisions passed by the British and French against the United States as unintended consequences of the Napoleonic Wars and American unhappiness at the British practice of impressment, especially after the Chesapeake incident of 1807. In response to the 1806 British Orders in Council, which hurt American trade, the US (under Thomas Jefferson) first tried various retaliatory embargoes against the British. However these embargoes hurt the US far more than they did Britain, angering American citizens and helping the cause of War Hawks (people who favored going to war) in Congress like Henry Clay. In 1812, after defeating DeWitt Clinton in the presidential election, James Madison asked Congress to declare war against Britain which they did. There were numerous battles fought in Canada, and the Northern United States, as well as naval battles, but neither side could gain a definitive advantage. By mid 1814, the War of 1812 was becoming more costly and had lasted longer than either side had anticipated. Britain, which had other issues to deal with, chief among them the Napoleonic Wars, began to look for a way to get out of the war. In the Belgian city of Ghent American negotiators met with British diplomats. After considerable argument the treaty of Ghent was signed, officially ending the war.
Introduction With the ongoing battles between England and France in the early 19th century, the newly formed United States found itself thrust in the middle of this struggle. In the early part of the century Napoleon was on a mission to once again establish a mighty French empire of early years. But with the build up of the royal British Navy the English were trying fiercely to hold Napoleon in check. The United States was determined to stay neutral and continue its trading with both nations. However several mandates passed by both France and England made this very difficult. With England’s naval blockade and the repeated search and seizure of American trade vessels, the United States, led by an aggressive group of leaders in congress known as the Young War Hawks, took a very aggressive approach to Britain and its royal navy. However, the War Hawks and President Madison also had plans of expansion in mind, to extend its boarders to the North Pole, home to royal colonies of the now hated Great Britain. With this plan and the negative feeling toward Britain, the war was just around the corner. And in June of 1812, a full-fledged war was upon them. The war, which lasted approximately two years, was a very bloody and costly battle to both the United States and Britain. Systematic Analysis To begin to look at this war we must take a look at the system the world was in at the time. The world was dominated by a bi-polar system, with France and England being the two poles.
Although America did not win The War of 1812, due to the Battle of Lake Erie, they did not lose it. The war was caused by the impressment of American soldiers, blockades on American trade, and Indian slaughters on the American frontier. James Madison launched The War of 1812 so that the United States would not be taken advantage of, but by doing so, he took on an army fifty times bigger than his own. When it looked like America would lose the war, Oliver Hazard Perry turned the tables and won the deciding battle that allowed James Monroe to sign the Treaty of Ghent and bring peace to the two countries. Although the original conflicts were not solved, they dissipated over time. The War of 1812 may not have solved many problems, but it proved to American’s that they could stand together and prevail over injustice.
The Joy Luck Club is the telling of a tale of struggle by four mothers and their four daughters trying to understand the issue of gender identity, how they each discover or lose their sense of self and what they mean to one another. Throughout the book each of the mothers works hard at teaching their daughters the virtues of Chinese wisdom while allowing the opportunities of American life. They try passing on a piece of themselves despite the great barriers that are built between the women. Each of the stories gives a wonderful glimpse into the Chinese culture and heritage that the mothers are trying to reveal to their daughters through the use of festivals, food dishes, marriage ceremonies, and the raising of children, essentially their past experiences.
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.
The hardest problem communicating emerges between Suyuan and Jing-Mei. Suyuan is a very strong woman who lost everything she ever had in China: "her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls" (141). Yet she finds the strength to move on and still retains her traditional values. She remarries and has Jing-Mei and creates a new life for herself in America. She is the one who brings together three other women to form the Joy Luck Club. The rift is the greatest between Suyuan and June. Suyuan tries to force her daughter to be everything she could ever be. She sees the opportunities that America has to offer, and does not want to see her daughter throw those opportunities away. She wants the best for her daughter, and does not want Jing-Mei to ever let go of something she wants because it is too hard to achieve. "America is where all my mother's hopes lay. . .There were so many ways for ...