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Chinese culture vs American culture
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从《喜福会》看中美家庭价值观差异 摘要:美国著名华裔作家谭恩美的代表作《喜福会》,讲述了四个从中国移民到美国的家庭中,中国母亲和美国化了的女儿之间的矛盾与冲突,是研究探讨中美价值观的极佳范本。本文将从《喜福会》入手,运用比较研究法着重探讨中美家庭价值观中家庭概念与地位、婚姻观、教育观的差异,并进一步分析导致这些差异的深层原因,如文化环境、传统观念、社会形态等。通过分析其原因,有助于加深两国的相互了解,进行有效的交流,使中国的家庭价值观得以发展和完善。 关键词:喜福会;家庭价值观;家庭教育;婚姻观;差异 A Study of Differences of Family Values in Chinese and American Cultures with The Joy Luck Club as an Example Abstract: The Joy Luck Club, is the famous second generation Chinese American writer Amy Tan’s magnum opus. It is a narrative novel focusing on the conflicts between Chinese mothers and Americanized daughters in four Chinese American immigrant families. It serves as an excellent sample to discuss the family values of China and America. This paper will take The Joy They are more democratic comparatively. They always encourage their children to do what they want and offer them help. They allow children to make mistakes and they think children will learn a lot from that. They let the children feel the world in their own initiative. They believe it is helpful for the children to obtain the ability to think independently. As is shown in the novel, The Joy Luck of Club, those American Chinese daughters were raised in American environment, so even though they received some of the Chinese standards taught by their parents, they embraced an American lifestyle and would fight against their mother for their rights. So when she was a child, she tried her best to make a stand against her future that was designed by mother. Being raised up in American, Waverly believed that “I am my own person. I am not your person.” And anyone’s achievement belongs to his business. She felt embarrassed with her mother, and when she finally could not take it anymore, she talked back to her mother: “Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don’t you learn to play chess? ” What seems natural for the mother becomes unbearable for the daughter. 3.3 Different view of Since then, even her own family members treated her as an outsider. In her husband’s home, she tried very hard to learn all kinds of housework and tried every means to please her husband and his families members. She took that as the direction of her future life. She behaved as an obedient daughter-in-law in front of her parents-in-law, just as what they wanted her to be. She asked the chef to kill a young chicken every morning and to make chicken soup without adding a drop of water. Then she poured it into a bowl in person. This was Tyan-yu’s breakfast. In every evening, she made a pot of delicious and nutritious soup for the whole family, which made her mother-in-law very pleased. Her behavior was completely according with the traditional requirements of a wife who is equipped with three obedience and four virtues. However, her mother-in-law was still unsatisfied with her in the end and the reason was she didn’t conceive and give birth to a
Yan Zhitui states that, "women take charge of family affairs, entering into lawsuits, straightening out disagreements, and paying calls to seek favor...the government offices are filled with their fancy silks." (Differences between north and south, 111). Yet, even in the Qing dynasty women were still restricted by and expected to uphold more traditional ideals, especially in the public eye. So, in the end, through her virtue, Hsi-Liu’s two children we able to become upright. Here, there is a split between what a woman is supposed to be according to old Chinese tradition, and the realities facing women in Tancheng. The loss of her husband, and economic hardship had forced His-Liu to behave in a different way, as if she were usurping the power from the eldest son so she could teach the two boys a lesson about being good family members. While she still maintains the ideals of bearing children, and being loyal to her husband, even after he dies, out of necessity she is forced to break from Confucian ideals of being only concerned with the domestic issues. This too put her at odds with the more traditional society around her, as the villagers pitied her sons, but vilified the Hsi-Liu for being so strict with them (Woman Wang, 65). Had she remarried, she would have been looked down upon even more because she would had broken her duty to remain faithful to her deceased
Originally the narrator admired her father greatly, mirroring his every move: “I walked proudly, stretching my legs to match his steps. I was overjoyed when my feet kept time with his, right, then left, then right, and we walked like a single unit”(329). The narrator’s love for her father and admiration for him was described mainly through their experiences together in the kitchen. Food was a way that the father was able to maintain Malaysian culture that he loved so dearly, while also passing some of those traits on to his daughter. It is a major theme of the story. The afternoon cooking show, “Wok with Yan” (329) provided a showed the close relationship father and daughter had because of food. Her father doing tricks with orange peels was yet another example of the power that food had in keeping them so close, in a foreign country. Rice was the feature food that was given the most attention by the narrator. The narrator’s father washed and rinsed the rice thoroughly, dealing with any imperfection to create a pure authentic dish. He used time in the kitchen as a way to teach his daughter about the culture. Although the narrator paid close attention to her father’s tendencies, she was never able to prepare the rice with the patience and care that her father
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.
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.
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.
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.
The complexitities of any mother-daughter relationship go much deeper then just their physical features that resemble one another. In Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, the stories of eight Chinese women are told. Together this group of women forms four sets of mother and daughter pairs. The trials and triumphs, similarities and differences, of each relationship with their daughter are described, exposing the inner makings of four perfectly matched pairs. Three generations of the Hsu family illustrate how both characteristics and values get passed on through generations, even with the obstacles of different cultures and language.
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.
The second and third sections are about the daughters' lives, and the vignettes in each section trace their personality growth and development. Through the eyes of the daughters, we can also see the continuation of the mothers' stories, how they learned to cope in America. In these sections, Amy Tan explores the difficulties in growing up as a Chinese-American and the problems assimilating into modern society. The Chinese-American daughters try their best to become "Americanized," at the same time casting off their heritage while their mothers watch on, dismayed. Social pressures to become like everyone else, and not to be different are what motivate the daughters to resent their nationality. This was a greater problem for Chinese-American daughters that grew up in the 50's, when it was not well accepted to be of an "ethnic" background.
The mother-daughter relationship is often complex and confusing. Amy Tan explores this relationship with novel The Joy Luck Club narrated by four daughters and three mothers: Jing-mei Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Lena St. Clair, Waverly Jong, An-mei Jordan, Ying-Ying St. Clair, and Lindo Jong. June narrates in her late mother's place. The mothers talk about their difficult pasts in China and how they have been changed. The trauma from their past causes their daughters not to be able to connect to . The women are finally able to connect to each other. The women are forced to learn from the past, overcome adversity, and learn to understand one another.
As the four women entered America, which is far from their motherland China, they experience a change of culture, the American culture, which was dominant than the Chinese. The Chinese mothers are faced with a difficult task of how to raise their American-born daughters with an understanding of their heritage. The daughters clearly show a gap in culture between the Chinese culture and American culture. The mothers wanted their daughter to follow the Chinese traditions, but the daughters followed the American traditions and even some of them got married to American men. The mothers tried to tell their daughters the story about the Chinese ancestors but the daughter could not follow them and the daughters thought their mothers were backwards and did not know what they are saying. As much as the mothers tried to show love to their daughters, the daughters usually responded negatively. They often saw their mothers’ attempts to guidance as a failure to understand the American culture. Being Chinese and living in America, both the mothers and the daughters struggle with many issues like identity, language, translation, and others. The mothers try to reconcile their Chinese pasts with their American presents; the daughters try to find a balance between independence and loyalty to their heritage
In the novel, The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, Ann-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying Ying St. Clair are all women who grow up in a traditional China, where there is sexism. They deal with serious problems that corrupt their lives. Through perseverance and the passing of time their lives return to normal.
The American daughters, on the other hand, the other half of the inseparable pair, tell stories of how their mothers tradition, culture, and beliefs, helped them come to many realizations about themselves. These realizations are both positive and negative. Jing-Mei Woo tells the story of how her mother wanted her to be the next Shirley Temple. "My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. You could open a restaurant...You could become instantly famous.
...ith Jing Mei and her mother, it is compounded by the fact that there are dual nationalities involved as well. Not only did the mother’s good intentions bring about failure and disappointment from Jing Mei, but rooted in her mother’s culture was the belief that children are to be obedient and give respect to their elders. "Only two kinds of daughters.....those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!" (Tan1) is the comment made by her mother when Jing Mei refuses to continue with piano lessons. In the end, this story shows that not only is the mother-daughter relationship intricately complex but is made even more so with cultural and generational differences added to the mix.
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.