Amy Tan struggled with many issues caused by her dual cultures, which she expressed thoroughly in her works. Daisy and John Tan were post war immigrants and the parents of Amy Tan (Amy Tan). Tan was given the Chinese name An-Mei, which stands for blessings from America (McCarthy). To them she was the blessing that they had received after their own struggles. Tan’s father came to America after WWII to become a minister (Amy Tan). Even though it seemed like Tan’s life was running smoothly tragedy struck. Both Tan’s father and older brother died of a brain tumor when Tan was only fifteen years old (Wiener 27). In her works, Amy Tan focuses on the struggles that Chinese-American women face in mother-daughter relationships, their struggles to control their cultural identity and the tragedy that accelerates the broken relationship.
Before coming to America, Tan’s mother had been forced into a marriage (Amy Tan). She divorced her first husband and went to America to marry Tan’s father, whom she had met in China during WWII (Martin). When Tan’s mother, Daisy, came to the United States, she had to leave her young children behind with the chance that one day she would be able to go back for them. Daisy’s children from her first marriage stayed in China while Daisy came to America (McCarthy). Tan models the story of her half-sisters being left behind by their mother in The Joy Luck Club. In the story, Suyuan Woo had to give up her daughters when she left China while facing many obstacles trying to find them (Wiener 25-27).Although Daisy did not have any remorse in leaving her family behind including her two daughters (Showalter 789). In The Hundred Secret Senses, Olivia’s father came from China to America seeking a better life but had no c...
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McCarthy, Joanne. Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition, Biography Reference Center. September 2006, Web.24 Feb. 2014. .
Parini, Jay. "Amy Tan." American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies.. New York: Scribner's, 2002. 292-297. Print.
Showalter, Elaine. "Amy Tan." The Vintage Book of American Women Writers. New York: Vintage Books, 2011. 789-799. Print.
Tan, Amy. The Hundred Secret Senses. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1995. Print.
Tan, Amy. The Opposite of Fate: a book of musings. New York: Putnam, 2003. Print.
Wiener, Gary. Women's Issues in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2008. Print.
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.
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.
Goldstein, Marc, et al. "Ai." Magill’S Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition (2006): 1. Biography Reference Center. Web. 1 Apr. 2014.
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.
Amy Ruth Tan was born to John and Daisy Tan on February 19, 2952 (“Amy Tan Biography”). Although Amy Tan’s parents were both born in China, she was American born. Daisy Tan was born to a wealthy family in Shanghai, China. John Tan, on the other hand, was an electrical engineer and Baptist minister. Amy Tan’s parents met in a dangerous decade of the 1940’s in China while battles were being fought on all fronts. John Tan was working for the United States Information Service during WWII, which made it fairly easy for him to escape China for the U.S. when the war ended. Daisy Tan, however, was not as fortunate; she had been imprisoned. She escaped in 1949 right before the Communist takeover; she left on the last boat to deport from Shanghai to the U.S. Shortly after Daisy arrived in the U.S., her and John Tan arranged to be married. Amy Tan’s parents had two other children besides her; they were John Jr. and Peter Tan. The Tan clan moved around many times while Amy Tan was growing up, finally settling in Santa Clara, California (Chatfield-Taylor 190).
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.
Ho, Wendy. Swan-Feather Mothers and Coca-Cola Daughters: Teaching Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club. An excerpt from Teaching American Ethnic Literatures/ Nineteen Essays, ed. By John R. Maitino and David R. Peck. 1996. University of New Mexico Press.
Amy Tan in her novel The Joy Luck Club presents us with daughters who are striving to place themselves beyond the control of strong mothers and become individuals. Adrienne Rich in her book Of Woman Born calls this splitting from the mother, "matraphobia" (Rich, 235), and later notes: "The mother stands for the victim in ourselves, the unfree woman, the martyr. Our personalities seem dangerously to blur and overlap with our mothers; and, in a desperate attempt to know where mother ends and daughter begins we perform radical surgery." (Rich, 236) Tan shows us two characters in her novel who consciously split from their mother when they feel unable to claim their true selves. These two characters are Waverly Jong and Jing-mei Woo.
"I have already experienced the worst. After this, there is no worst possible thing" (Amy Tan 121). Throughout The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan tells stories of how mothers use the misfortunes in their lives, to try to teach their daughters about life. Many of the mothers had bad experiences in their pasts and do not want to see their daughters live through the same types of problems. They try to make their daughters' lives as easy and problem free as possible. However, the daughters do not see this as an act of love, but rather as an act of control. In the end, the daughters realize that their mothers tried to use their experiences to teach them not to give up hope, and to look at the good of an experience rather than the bad.
Heung, Marina. "Daughter-Text/Mother-Text: Matrilineage in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club." Feminist Studies (Fall 1993): 597-616.
In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, four Chinese born mothers and their four American born daughters tell stories from their own point of view about their relationships with one another. These four mothers demonstrate the finest parenting by trying to keep their heritage alive and educate their daughters, while being immigrants. Through the mothers' actions, they are able to teach and influence their daughters about their Chinese heritage, about everyday life and situations, and how to stand up for themselves all while being in an overwhelming American society.
In Amy Tan's novels, The Joy Luck Club, and A Hundred Secret Senses, she describes relationships between mothers and daughters reflecting on her own parents experiences in life.
Baym, Nina et al. Ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter 8th ed. New York:
Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club 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.
Litz, A. Walton, and Molly Weigel, eds. American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies, A Retrospective Supplement. Vol. 1. New York: Scribner's, 1998.