Chinese Mothers and their American Daughters in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club
““No choice! No choice!” She doesn’t know. If she doesn’t speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn?t try, she can lose her chance forever.
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.
And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.” (Tan 241)
In desperation, mother An-Mei Hsu describes her frustration over her own mother-daughter relationship in Amy Tan?s The JoyLuck 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: mother-mother, mother-daughter, and daughter-daughter. The way these stories weave in and out of the past and present, and how these women?s lives unfolded tell much of what women are taught to think of themselves, and how it shapes their lives. How a mother hopes to give her daughter strength, respect for herself, and a bond between mother and daughter, as told by the mothers, is reflected back by how each daughter processes what she perceives her mothers? lessons to be.
All of the mothers came to America to escape the horrors of war. They hoped for the prosperity and ease that living in the United States would afford them. With them they brought the sacred teachings of Taoism and Confucianism. Peter Tavernise defines these ancient traditions in "Fasting of the Heart: Mother-Tradition and Sacred Systems in Amy Tan?s The Joy Luck Club." Jing-mei describes her limited understanding of these concepts as, ?The elements were from my mother?s own version of organic chemistry.? (Tan 19) Tavernise states, ?Just as in the Confucian ritual system, very little of the mother-tradition in the text is told explicitly from mother to daughter: ritual actions are supposed to be observed, absorbed, read, and understood in order to be transformed, preserved and handed down in turn.
The 1980s saw great political and military action throughout the world. However, one particular event that took place began in the early 1980s which was the Iran-Contra Affair. The Iran-Contra scandal is said to be the result of President Ronald Reagan’s attempt to accomplish two things. The first being his desire to see that the Americans which were being held as hostages by Iran, to be freed and the second was that he wanted to provide assistance to the contras in Nicaragua by going around congress. As obvious and as famous as the previously mentioned appears to be, the key states or countries involved are a matter of investigation. The heavy hitters in the Iran-Contra scandal aside from the United States, were Nicaragua, Iran, and Israel, which possess the question; how did several countries from various places around the world become so entangled in one of the world’s most memorable, multinational, scandals of all time?
At the congressional hearings, Oliver North took full responsibility for the scandal, claiming he did it in the name of patriotism. In reality, he and his security advisor, Admiral John Poindexter had lied to Congress, shredded evidence, and refused to inform the President of details in order to guarantee his “plausible deniability”. Ultimately, the Iran-Contra investigation raised more questions than it answered. Reagan held fast to his plea of ignorance, the full role of the CIA director remained murky, and the role of Vice President Bush remained mysterious as well. The Iran-Contra affair revealed how secretive government officials undermine the Constitution and compromise Presidential authority under the facade of patriotism.
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.
Rodríguez, Ana Patricia. 2009. Dividing the Isthmus: Central American transnational histories, literatures & cultures. U.S.: University of Texas Press, 130-167
The investigation assesses the extent of significance of President Reagan’s role in the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980’s. Reagan’s role will be looked at while aiding the Nicaraguan Contras, releasing American hostages, both which led to the Iran-Contra affair, and during the cover up, in America and partly in Iran. An investigation account and American history are mostly used to evaluate Reagan’s role. Two of the sources used in this essay, Firewall: The Iran-Contra conspiracy and cover-up written by Lawrence E. Walsh and The Age of Reagan by Sean Wilentz will then be evaluated for their origins, purposes, values, and limitations.
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.
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.
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
While transactional leadership relies on a system of rewards and penalties it doesn't provide a lot of in conditions of inspiration to encourage folks to travel past the fundamentals. Given this truth the supporters of transactional leaders may get happy and develop a propensity to attain smallest expectations solely that might facilitate them avoid penalties (Bass, 1990). Therefore the leader and also the follower ar in associate conformity on what the follower would take delivery of achieving the negotiated level of performance (Bass, 1990). The success of such leadership depends on the extent of satisfaction the leader and followers have in following this technique of performance based mostly appraisals (Bass, 1990)
However, color-blindness is not the answer and may even be detrimental to the desired result. People need to be aware of how racial interactions affect all races, and be wiling to participate in open and honest discussions. This hiding of feelings and over compensating with color-blindness is not helping anyone to move past racist thoughts and behaviors. This idea that backstage racism should be accepted is absurd, and causes irreparable damages. “The “fun” for young Whites in a private backstage has real and serious consequences that ratify and perpetuate old racist stereotypes, contributing to and maintain contemporary racial hierarchies (as evident in higher education, health care, the legal system, housing, etc.) that Whites have the privilege to ignore” (Pg. 206). These backstage behaviors make it apparent that racism is not dying out “with Gram-pa,” as one student alluded to in their journal. Racism is still very prevalent, but Whites now participate in racist conversations behind closed
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.
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Transformational leadership is the process by which a leader engages with others and creates a connection that raises the level of motivation and morality in both the leader and the follower towards the greater good (Northouse, 2010, p. 172). Transformational leaders are different than managers, which as Burns claims are the differences are in characteristics and behaviors. Burns also established two concepts transforming leadership and transactional leadership. The transformational leader elevates followers to make the whole work environment more successful and have everyone be successful, while transactional leaders are focused only on the accomplishments of tasks. Transformational leadership is a way of life, and there is