History, Culture and Identity of Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

1409 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: How do the mother daughter relationships in amy tan's the joy luck club contribute to the overall meaning of th novel

History, Culture and Identity of Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club is a novel that deals with many controversial issues. These issues unfold in her stories about four Chinese mothers and their American raised daughters. The novel begins with the mothers talking about their own childhood’s and the relationship that they had with their mothers. Then it focuses on the daughters and how they were raised, then to the daughters current lives, and finally back to the mothers who finish their stories. Tan uses these mother-daughter relationships to describe conflicts of history, culture, and identity and how each of these themes are intertwined with one another through the mothers and daughters.

The mothers and daughters not only experience a generation gap, but since the mothers were born in China and the daughters were born in America, they also experience a certain cultural gap. This leads to miscommunication and misunderstanding on both parts. To the mothers, their Chinese heritage is very meaningful to them and the Americanized daughters don’t always understand this. The daughters get embarrassed by their mothers’ broken English. For instance, at one point Lindo Jong says "But inside I am becoming ashamed. I am ashamed she is ashamed. Because she is my daughter and I am proud of her, and I am her mother and she is not proud of me." (pg. 291). Lindo is hurt because her daughter Waverly, is talking to her like she is a child. Waverly does not do this on purpose, she just has a hard time understanding her mother and her background, like the other daughters in the book.

"Living with their traditional culture in American society, Chinese-American women suffer the prob...

... middle of paper ...

...ying to save their daughters from the cultural barriers, and identity crisis’ that they had to face. It is in listening to these stories that the daughters find their true identities and become the people that they really are. They realize that they do not have to look at their mothers’ as their opponents, but instead their equals. They accept and even honor the fact that they are the same as their mothers. The Joy Luck Club tells a strong and powerful story that shows the importance of history, culture, and identity in mother daughter relationships, and also in everyday life.

Works Cited

Do, Thuan Thi. Chinese-American Women in American Culture. 1992 http://www.ics.uci.edu/~tdo/ea/chinese.html

Jokinen, Anniina. Anniina's Amy Tan Page. 1996 http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/amytan/

Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York: Random House, 1989.

Show More
Related

  • Mother Daughter Relationships In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1083 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Chinese Women In Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    1258 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Comparing Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and Waiting for Mr. Kim

    1577 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

    772 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Andrew Jackson: The Champion Of The Common Man

    1569 Words  | 4 Pages

    Despite the fact that America’s economy was heavily influenced by government interference and favoritism under John Quincy Adams and the American System, by 1832 Andrew Jackson, the Champion of the Common Man, jeopardized his political security in the interest of both preserving every man’s right to opportunity and upholding a nonpartisan economy. We can draw insight from Jackson’s disgust for banks, or rather for any act of government that gives a special advantage to one group over another. In Jackson’s letter to Congress justifying his Bank Veto Message, he argues, “when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages... make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society… have a right to complain of the injustices of their government.” In the preceding months, Jackson was in the midst of his presidential campaign for reelection when his opponents put political pressure on him by fast tracking the Bank Bill. Jackson, however, remained steadfast in his belief that the proposed bank was unconstitutional and thus he vetoed the bill. Not surprisingly, Jackson became the object of political slander. In his reply to Jackson’s veto, Daniel Webster complains, “[This message] raises a cry that liberty is in danger, at the very moment when it puts forth claims to powers heretofore unknown and unheard of. It effects alarm for public freedom, when nothing endangers that freedom so much as its own unparalleled pretenses.” In other words, Webster proposed that through Jackson’s overuse of the veto, he was not only holding congress hostage, but also subverting democracy. On the contrary, the establishment of Jacksonian Democracy expanded the liberties of the common

    Read More

  • Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

    1798 Words  | 4 Pages

    America was not everything the mothers had expected for their daughters.  The mothers always wanted to give their daughters the feather to tell of their hardships, but they never could.  They wanted to wait until the day that they could speak perfect American English.  However, they never learned to speak their language, which prevented them from communicating with their daughters.  All the mothers in The Joy Luck Club had so much hope for their daughters in America, but instead their lives ended up mirroring their mother’s life in China.  All the relationships had many hardships because of miscommunication from their different cultures.  As they grew older the children realized that their ...

    Read More

  • Movie Essay - The Film Based Upon of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

    712 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Joy Luck Club and The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

    643 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Mother and Daughter Similarities in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

    1951 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Americanization in The Joy Luck Club

    1951 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Stereotypes And Discrimination

    1922 Words  | 4 Pages

    A stereotype is the grouping of all members of a certain common distinction into a set of standardized rules and aspects (Moore 36). Common areas people stereotype are race and gender; however, people also use sexual preferences, age, religion, and attractiveness as distinctions to group. The use of stereotypes is ethically wrong and not always correct. People use these judgments as a way to separate a...

    Read More

  • Putting an End to Bullying in America

    2337 Words  | 5 Pages

    America has struggled with bullying for many decades. Bullying is a broad topic. Bullying can be defined many different ways as well as expressed in different ways and places. Bullying has different effects on everyone. Bullying is not only physical, but also affects the victim emotionally and socially. Cyber bullying and verbal bullying are different ways someone harms another person. Sexual harassment is a major form of bullying as well. “Bullying Laws” defines cyberbullying as online emails, text messages, or posts on social media and other websites (“Bullying Laws”). Examples of verbal bullying would be name-calling, threatening, and teasing. Bullying can be between peers, or between different ages. People are not aware of the laws that are in place. “As of October, 2010, 45 states had bullying laws” (“Bullying Laws”). Due to the fact, bullying is so common between many age groups and done in many ways, it is important to recognize the problem and make policies and laws to reduce bullying between all ages.

    Read More

  • The Role of Science, Ethics, and Faith in Modern Philosophy

    3618 Words  | 8 Pages

    Wiester, John L. 1993. The Real Meaning of Evolution. Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 45 (3): 182-86.

    Read More

  • Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club

    1520 Words  | 4 Pages

    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. The hardest problem communicating emerges between Suyuan and Jing-Mei.   Suyuan is a very strong woman who lost everything she ever had in China: "her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls" (141).

    Read More

  • The Negative Effects Of Stereotyping In The Modern Society

    773 Words  | 2 Pages

    With the modern day fad of being politically correct, stereotyping is seen with a negative view. Oversimplifying people can spawn many different reactions, but many aspects of the world are built upon the foundation of stereotyping. It can not only be a useful thing, but it can also be a very effective way of deciding how to react to someone. While stereotypes may seem rash and uneducated, many of them have been created for a reason.

    Read More

More about History, Culture and Identity of Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club

Open Document