Nearly two decades after Amy Tan was born, she began to uncover information that her family previously withheld from her. As time went on it, it started to consume her every thought, she found writing as an escape and used it as a tool to discover who she was individually. Many speculate as to whether Tan’s literature is a direct reflection of her personal experiences, there are countless similarities between the two. Tan and her mother had many barriers to overcome throughout the course of their relationship, and most of Tan’s work reflects distressed mother-daughter relationships. Although, Tan does not confirm that her personal situations are a direct reflection of her literature, we can actually correlate and relate almost all of her work …show more content…
While still exploring the world of language and culture, Tan seems to “represent a more fully developed reworking of issues about identity and language” (jstor.org, Dunick). Lisa Dunick suggests, “In The Bonesetter's Daughter, Tan creates the possibility for the reception of cultural and personal memory in the American daughter because the daughter, in effect, becomes the reader of her mother's text” (jstor.org, Dunick). I think that Dunick was in fact true in her findings, which further proves that Amy tan is finding herself through her writing. Tan’s intimate correlations between her personal life and her literature become less cloudy as her literary career …show more content…
"Daughter-Text/Mother-Text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan's "Joy Luck Club"" Feminist Studies 19.3 (1993): 596-616. JSTOR. Web. 19 Mar. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/3178102?ref=search-gateway:c8fb8dd81b4b4b3a0fd92f8f8954a65c>.
Xu, Ben. "Memory and the Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club." MELUS 19.1 (1994): 3-18. JSTOR. Web. 19 Mar. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/467784?ref=search-gateway:d3d53e34df57e1a510890c83550e11ee>.
Hamilton, Patricia L. "Feng Shui, Astrology, and the Five Elements: Traditional Chinese Belief in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club." MELUS 24.2 (1999): 125-45. JSTOR. Web. 19 Mar. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/467703?ref=search-gateway:aba230b1a1f16b40895af9bc79d47db3>.
Adams, Bella. "Representing History in Amy Tan's "The Kitchen God's Wife"" MELUS 28.2 (2003): 9-30. JSTOR. Web. 19 Mar. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/3595280?ref=search-gateway:41191928c5bec68ba08d07278792a8c1>.
Dunick, Lisa M. S. "The Silencing Effect of Canonicity: Authorship and the Written Word in Amy Tan's Novels." MELUS 31.2 (2006): 3-20. JSTOR. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.
amy tan, a gifted writer, had the chance to change those images, to dispel the public's misconceptions and to forge a new asian american identity. instead, she copped out on her obligations, meekly reinforcing every conceivable stereotype.
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.
Their experience growing up as children of immigrants and later reflection on the events that ensued, aided both Amy Tan and Khang Nguyen in their self discoveries and understanding of their culture. Tan describes her experiences through several anecdotes, while Nguyen uses the different settings of school and his home to contrast two cultures. Tan’s title “Mother Tongue” encompasses both her initial perception of her mother’s English as separate English, limited and broken and her later feeling that, like her mother, her mother’s language is a distinct part of her. Nguyen’s title, “The Happy Days Syndrome”, compares his initial hatred of his culture and language to a syndrome, which he too is able to eventually understand and overcome.
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.
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?
Throughout Asian American literature there is a struggle between Asian women and their Asian American daughters. This is the case in The Joy Luck Club, written by Amy Tan and also in the short story "Waiting for Mr. Kim," written by Carol Roh-Spaulding. These two stories are very different, however they are similar in that they portray Asian women trying to get their American daughters to respect their Asian heritage. There are certain behaviors that Asian women are expected to have, and the mothers feel that their daughters should use these behaviors.
...Despite the difficulties Winnie went through while she was younger, she appears to be a strong woman in America. The novel suggests that perhaps this is because she has learned from her past and had to recreate her ideas about women in America (“SparkNotes” Par 6). Yet another theme in The Kitchen God’s Wife is the tension between fate and self-determination. The ideas of luck, fate, and destiny are constantly being tried against the ideas of self-determination, free choice, and will. Winnie’s life is full of choices, and these very choices are what causes her to be become such a strong woman (“SparkNotes” Par 7). Winnie recreates her life in America, which sheds another shard of light on the idea of self-determination over the idea of fate. She chose to recreate herself, and she had to make it happen; fate played no hand in her becoming (“SparkNotes” Par 8).
Amy Tan's immensely popular novel, The Joy Luck Club explores the issues faced by first and second generation Chinese immigrants, particularly mothers and daughters. Although Tan's book is a work of fiction, many of the struggles it describes are echoed in Maxine Hong Kingston's autobiographical work, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. The pairs of mothers and daughters in both of these books find themselves separated along both cultural and generational lines. Among the barriers that must be overcome are those of language, beliefs and customs, and geographic loyalty. The gulf between these women is sadly acknowledged by Ying-ying St. Clair when she says of her daughter, Lena, "'All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore'" (Tan 242). Ultimately, it falls to the daughters, the second, divided generation, to bridge the gap of understanding and reconnect with their old world mothers.
Davidson, Cathy N. and Linda Wagner-Matlin. "Amy Tan." The Oxford Companion to Womens Writing in the United States. Pg 869. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Tan first presented a love for her mother. The words and candour of speech that her mother uses reminds her of home and family. Her mother’s way of speaking seems natural to Tan and shaped how she interacted and reflected on the world around her. Tan took issue with the term “broken” as a description of her mother 's language because she saw nothing broken or limited in the way that her mother was able to share ideas. The limits for her mother was not how she organized her words in her sentences but rather it was how people would treat her when they heard her speak the way she does. Tan became accustomed to dealing with authorities who would not listen to her mother 's broken language. The stockbroker who tried not to pay her and the doctor who ‘lost’ her test results. Tan however also believes that her mother limited her in the way she was able to learn and what she excelled at in school. Math and sciences came easier to Tan than language, she struggled with the ambiguity of writing. Tan out of rebellion and passion started to write seriously and went on to write novels like The Joy Luck Club with complex sentence structure and academic words. She later found that using her family and her mother’s English that she was able to see her mother for her true ideas and passion. Her story is one of a second generation
Amy tan was raised by her Asian mother that she did not speak proper English “broken English”. The strategies that Amy Tan used in the story made her realized different English that she uses in her life. She was giving many speeches to a lot of people and along with her speeches she realized the different English that she never uses with her mother, when she was talking about her book The Joy Luck Club. She noticed her different English when she was walking with her mother and husband; she said “not waste money that way” her mom or her husband did not realized her different English.
In the work of Amy Tan’s “Mother’s Tongue” she provides a look into how she adapted her language to assimilate into American culture. She made changes to her language because her mother heavily relied on her for translation. She was the voice of her mother, relaying information in standard English to those who were unable to understand her mother’s broken english. She tells about her mother’s broken english and its impact on her communication to those outside their culture. Her mothers broken english limited others’ perception of her intelligence, and even her own perception of her mother was scewed: Tan said, “I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mothers ‘limited’ English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say.” (419) The use of standard english was a critical component to Tan’s assimilation into American culture. Standard English was an element she acquired to help her mother but more importantly is was an element that helped in her gain success as a writer. Tan changed her ‘Englishes’ (family talk) to include standard English that she had learnt in school and through books, the forms of English that she did not use at home with her mother. (417-418) Tan realized the ch...
Amy Tan is a Chinese-American author. She had become Americanized, according to her mother, who still held traditional Chinese values. They fought sometimes, just as the women and daughters of The Joy Luck Club, over who was right and who was wrong regarding many problems they encountered. Tan most likely modeled The Joy Luck Club after her relationship with her mother. She even dedicated the novel “To my mother and the memory of her mother. You asked me once what I wo...
In her short story "Two Kinds," Amy Tan utilizes the daughter's point of view to share a mother's attempts to control her daughter's hopes and dreams, providing a further understanding of how their relationship sours. The daughter has grown into a young woman and is telling the story of her coming of age in a family that had emigrated from China. In particular, she tells that her mother's attempted parental guidance was dominated by foolish hopes and dreams. This double perspective allows both the naivety of a young girl trying to identify herself and the hindsight and judgment of a mature woman.
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.