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The Joy Luck Club retold the lives of four women who came from China and their four Americanized daughters. The protagonist, Jing Mei Woo (June) took over her mother’s place at the meetings of a social group called the Joy Luck Club. As its members play mah jong and feast on Chinese delicacies, friends of Jing Mei’s mother spin stories about the past and lament the barriers that exist between their daughter and themselves. In this paper, I will discuss briefly on cultural studies and the Chinese Immigrant Experience and Individual Identity that is very evident in this novel.
CONCEPTUAL THEORY
According to Rivkin and Ryan (1998), the word ‘culture’ acquired a new meaning in the 1960s and 1970s. Prior to that time, ‘culture’ was associated with art, literature, and classical music. To have ‘culture’ was to possess a certain taste for particular kinds of artistic endeavor. Anthropologists have always used the word ‘culture’ in much broader sense to mean forms of life and of social expression. The way people behave while eating, talking to each other, becoming sexual partners, interacting at work, engaging in ritualized social behaviour such as family gatherings, and the like constitute a culture. This broad definition of the term includes language and the arts, but it also includes the regularities, procedures, and rituals of human life in communities.
What is ‘Cultural Studies’? It is hard to define cultural studies mostly because the word ‘culture’ is notoriously hard to pin down, according to cultural critic Raymond Williams. Cultural studies is not a discrete approach but rather a set of practices. Patrick Brantlinger points out, cultural studies is not “a tightly coherent, unified movement with fixed agenda,” but a “loosely coherent group of tendencies, issues, and question”. Arising amidst the turmoils of the 1960s, cultural studies is composed of elements of Marxism, new historicism, feminism, gender studies, anthropology, studies of race and etnicity, film theory, sociology, urban studies, public policy studies, popular culture studies, and postcolonial studies: those fields that focus on social and cultural forces that either create community or cause division and alienation.
SUMMARY
This novel traces the fate of four mothers, Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-ying St. Clair and their four daughters, Jing-mei Woo (June), Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong, and Lena St. Clair. All four mothers fled China in the 1940s and retain much of their heritage. All four daughters are much Americanized.
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.
Many women find that their mothers have the greatest influence on their lives and the way their strengths and weaknesses come together. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, the lives of four Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters are followed through vignettes about their upbringings and interactions. One of the mothers, An-Mei Hsu, grows up away from her mother who has become the 4th wife of a rich man; An-Mei is forced to live with her grandmother once her mother is banned from the house, but eventually reunites and goes to live in the man’s house with her mother. Her daughter, Rose, has married an American man, Ted, but their marriage begins to end as he files for divorce; Rose becomes depressed and unsure what to do, despite her mother’s advice. An-Mei has strengths and weaknesses that shape her own courageous actions, and ultimately have an influence on her daughter.
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 Cultural Intelligence Difference was written by David Livermore, Ph.D. and published by AMACOM in 2011. After reading the book, I have found that the most important indicator of my ability to achieve success in today’s interconnected, globalized world is my cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence can give me the ability to understand different perspectives and adjust my behaviors accordingly. According to Dr. Livermore, cultural intelligence can be defined as the ability to function effectively in a variety of cultural contexts, including: national, ethnic, organizational, and generational. By reading this book I can improve my understanding of cultural intelligence (Livermore, 2011). This paper will discuss my understanding of CQ drive, CQ knowledge, CQ strategy, CQ action, how I can improve my scores in these categories, my cultural prejudices, and my cultural ignorance’s.
... did not afford her these things, Lindo is being very cautious, often critical, of her daughter and the choices that she has.
The movie, The Joy Luck Club, focuses around the lives of four Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters. The story takes place a few months after Junes mother, Suyuan has died. The mothers and daughters hold very different principles, where the mothers are still very traditional to their Chinese upbringings the daughters are much more “American.” The movie can be viewed from the Feminist Literary Theory, since the 8 main characters are female. The women’s life stories are told through a series of flashback scenes that deal heavily with female gender roles and the expectations of women. While the mothers and their daughter grew up in vastly different worlds, some of their experiences and circumstances correlate solely due to that fact that they experienced them because they are females.
Siddhartha Gautama is famously known as Gautama Buddha and was the founder of the idea of Buddhism. The Buddha was known to possess supernatural powers and abilities. He was born in the holy land of Nepal and his journey began in India when he decided to travel and teach himself about life. In the midst of his journey, he discovered Buddhism after he experienced a profound realization of the nature of life, death and existence. Buddhism became a religion based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama and since then Buddhism has been popular throughout many civilizations. Buddhism is now one of the most ancient religions in the world, where people follow Buddha, which stand for “awakened one,” and Buddhism which has gained popularity because of the teachings of the Buddha.
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.
Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club describes the lives of first and second generation Chinese families, particularly mothers and daughters. Surprisingly The Joy Luck Club and, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts are very similar. They both talk of mothers and daughters in these books and try to find themselves culturally. Among the barriers that must be overcome are those of language, beliefs and customs.
A crucial part of East Asian culture, the ideas of family and filial respect for parents obliged high esteem. The family carried the role of the elemental social unit in China (Welty 198). “To be obedient and respectful in all cases to their parents” is a stipulation in Asian culture (Welty 253). Mother and daughter relationships exhibit an especially intriguing dynamic because, in the traditional cultures, women often held second class positions that did not hold considerable authority . The Joy Luck Club’s Ying-Ying St. Clair explores this notion when she says, “I know this because I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people’s misery, to eat my own bitterness” (Tan 241). Due to this inherent cultural sexism, mothers often could only find respect from their daughters. To try to retain some dignity, mothers used this sovereignty over their daughters. Haunted by the clout of her mother, Waverly Jong complains, “I used to believe everything my mother said . . . The power of her words was that strong” (Tan 206). In the United States, mothers still tried to hold on to this stalwart dynamic of
Cultural intelligence (CQ) is defined as an individual’s capability to adapt and function in situations that involves new cultural setting. CQ is regarded a useful tool as it can allow an individual to work in effectively multi-cultural settings. An individual can develop CQ competencies through personal experiences such as travelling/studying abroad, working in a firm that is established from a culture different from their own and also studying the many ways people of different cultures function.
Buddhism was founded by the Buddha, a monk who lived 2,500 years ago in northern India. Buddhism is the main religion to 300 million people around the world. It originated about 2,500 years ago when a Buddha named, Siddhartha Gautama, was enlightened at the age of 35. The Buddhism religion is more of an idea or “way of life”. Buddhism has a resolution to life, which is unfairness and difference around the world; it offers a code of practice that leads to true happiness. Buddhism has many beliefs that the Buddha has taught such as: samsara, rebirth, karma, nirvana, the four noble truths, and the eightfold path. One of the Buddhist teachings is that money and power does not provide true happiness and that it is only temporary. The people of every country suffer whether they are either wealthy or poor, but those who apprehend Buddhist teachings can only discover true happiness (White).
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.
Before understand the film, Modern Times, we needed to understand the time period while the film made. America had the Industrial Revolution in 1840’s. It was little later than Europe, but America had abundant natural
The timing of this film was a significant factor in the story line. In the middle of the Great Depression unemployment and poverty were a major