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. ...
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...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
Traditions, heritage and culture are three of the most important aspects of Chinese culture. Passed down from mother to daughter, these traditions are expected to carry on for years to come. In Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, daughters Waverly, Lena, Rose and June thoughts about their culture are congested by Americanization while on their quests towards self-actualization. Each daughter struggles to find balance between Chinese heritage and American values through marriage and professional careers.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
In 1955, the Ying family immigrated for the second time to the United States. This, again, was not easy considering the Uni...
The rifts between mothers and daughters continue to separate them, but as the daughters get older they become more tolerant of their mothers. They learn they do not know everything about their mothers, and the courage their mothers showed during their lives is astounding. As they get older they learn they do not know everything, and that their mothers can still teach them much about life. They grow closer to their mothers and learn to be proud of their heritage and their culture. They acquire the wisdom of understanding, and that is the finest feeling to have in the world.
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.
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.
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.
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.