In life, the bond between a mother and her daughter is highly complex, and, often, this relationship is stressed by generational divides and a lack of mutual understanding. In the case of both a cultural and generational divide, such as the one in The Joy Luck Club, the mother-daughter relationship has the potential to be stressed further. However, for this particular set of women, this is not the case. In The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, while the environments of each generation are different, the sacrifices, methods, and wisdom used by each generation to protect their kin are similar, connected by a common culture and set of experiences across generations. Often in the novel, as their mothers had done for them, the mothers must make sacrifices to aid their children, passing on the previous generation’s legacy. The first, and most obvious, example of this is a pivotal point in the novel. All four of the mothers featured in The Joy Luck Club are originally from China, and all four left for America, leaving behind their culture and all familiarity with the hope that their daughters would fare better in the New World. A second, prominent set of sacrifices can be seen in the interactions between An-Mei Hsu, her mother, and grandmother, affectionately called Popo. First, we see An-Mei Hsu’s mother sacrificing her physical and metaphorical “life force” in the making of a soup that, at the time, was thought to be beneficial to a family member’s health. In this case, we see An-Mei’s mother making a sacrifice for Popo, An-mei’s grandmother – a daughter-to-mother exchange. Later, we see An-Mei’s mother making the ultimate sacrifice, suicide, for her daughter, in hopes that her low status as a concubine would not be passed to her daughter. ... ... middle of paper ... ...new it would happen." "Then why you don't stop it?" asked my mother. (165) In addition to Ying-Ying St. Clair, Lindo Jong and An-Mei Hsu both have their bad marriages. After going through this, the last thing they want is for their daughters to have to face the same challenges. In the mothers’ eyes, the least they can do is lend some of their Chinese insight to aid their American daughters. One could argue that the mothers’ trials don’t equate to modern times and the Western world. However, making that assumption would discredit the connection that is evident between the generations. Rather, the mothers’ experiences translate quite well, lending them greater insight into their daughters than their daughters could hope to know. At its core, The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, shows that shared pieces of culture and experiences transcend not just borders, but generations.
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.
Intergenerational conflicts are an undeniable facet of life. With every generation of society comes new experiences, new ideas, and many times new morals. It is the parent’s job go work around these differences to reach their children and ensure they receive the necessary lessons for life. Flannery O’Connor makes generous use of this idea in several of her works. Within each of the three short stories, we see a very strained relationship between a mother figure and their child. We quickly find that O’Conner sets up the first to be receive the brunt of our attention and to some extent loathing, but as we grow nearer to the work’s characteristic sudden and violent ending, we grow to see the finer details and what really makes these relations
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.
Throughout “The Joy Luck Club”, Chinese fables are used as significant teachings for life. ‘Feathers from a Thousand Li Away: Introduction’ is used for the first section because the chapters are about the mother’s journey from China to America. The story elaborates on the sacrifice the mother is making for a better life for their children. The story introduces the contention between American culture and Chinese culture conflict because the mother sees the Americanized daughter as the privilege. Amy wrote, “And over there [America] she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow!” (Feathers from a Thousand Li Away: Introduction, Page 17) This quote means that the daughters born in America will not understand the struggles the mother's faced
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.
In Amy Tan’s book "The Joy Luck Club," the theme of the "American Dream," which is the belief that America is a guaranteed land of opportunity, of success and happiness is the main theme in the story. It is of women who set off on a journey because in their own country they were suffering through many hardships, like war and shame from their own family in China. Much like Ernesto Galarza’s book, "Barrio Boy," his family and Ernesto experience a revolution in Mexico, their home country. The hardships of having to move from city to city in Mexico was tough on the family since they basically needed to start from scratch and ask for favors from other family members if they could stay under their roofs. In Amy Tan’s book, Lena one of the immigrant’s child is only 10 years old when her father is promoted. He moves the family across the bay to San Francisco, where they take an apartment at the top of a steep hill. Lena’s mother is not happy with the apartment; she feels that it is "not balanced," and that all their good luck will vanish.
The Joy Luck Club is an emotional tale about four women who saw life as they had seen it back in China. Because the Chinese were very stereotypic, women were treated as second class citizens and were often abused. Through sad and painful experiences, these four women had tried to raise their daughters to live the American dream by giving them love and support, such things which were not available to them when they were young. These women revealed their individual accounts in narrative form as they relived it in their memories. These flashbacks transport us to the minds of these women and we see the events occur through their eyes. There were many conflicts and misunderstandings between the two generations due to their differences in upbringing and childhood. In the end, however, these conflicts would bring mother and daughter together to form a bond that would last forever.
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.
In the “Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan, she writes about the stories that came from the mothers who lived in China and their harsh experiences they lived through. There are four mothers total and four daughters.Suyuan Woo is the mother of Jing-Mei Woo.An-mei Hsu is the mother of Rose Hsu Jordan. Lindo Jong is the mother of Waverly Jong and Ying-ying St.Clair is the mother Lena St.Clair. Each of the mothers came to America to live a better life and to give their kids a better opportunity to be successful. In the midst of that, each mother and daughter duo have a culture clash between the two. The mothers have their traditional Chinese way of do things and teaching their daughters lessons they learned when they were young. And the daughters sometimes
The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan is a piece of literature that displays the power of femininity. Through the past couple of centuries the role that women play in society has drastically changed. Women in various societies have experienced turmoil due to being discriminated against and looked down upon often. Women were viewed upon as being the house caregiver and leaving majority of the other jobs in society to men. Women have moved up the social ladder, politics, jobs, and in households. Femininity is shown throughout The Joy Luck Club. These women each have their own life experiences and stories but through it all they remained strong. Rules and regulations for women in China were very restrictive. Women had to live up to the ideal model of being obedient, hard working, bearing children, hide her unhappiness, and to not complain about anything. In China the women had little worth and were only seen as valuable to their immediate family members. Most of the mothers left China for the reason of improving their daughter’s lives in America. The novel demonstrates various characteristics of how women are represented. The theme of women is demonstrated through the hardships experienced, ethics and self-worth.
For many of us growing up, our mothers have been a part of who we are. They have been there when our world was falling apart, when we fell ill to the flu, and most importantly, the one to love us when we needed it the most. In “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, it begins with a brief introduction to one mother’s interpretation of the American Dream. Losing her family in China, she now hopes to recapture part of her loss through her daughter. However, the young girl, Ni Kan, mimics her mother’s dreams and ultimately rebels against them.
In 1955, the Ying family immigrated for the second time to the United States. This, again, was not easy considering the Uni...
The films The Joy Luck Club (Wang, 1993) and The Story of Mothers and Daughters (Weimberg, 2010) portray various types of the mother daughter relationship. Through these mother and daughter relationships, both films focus on the tension and love in the older years of the daughters lives’ but The Story of Mothers and Daughters focus on the all of the stages of life.
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.
In the short story Who’s Irish by Gish Jen and Everyday Use written by Alice Walker, both authors address generational conflicts between mothers and daughters, as well as struggles to coexist while living in very different cultural mindsets. The moral of both stories is that cross-cultural issues exist in every family tree and we often find comfort in unlikely places. While a mother may not agree with her daughter’s choices she never loses love, and while a daughter may not like decisions that are made by their mother she never loses respect. Both are stories about women going through struggle to integrate and adept into modern American life, two mothers struggle to understand their daughters and the lives they are immersed in.