Joy Luck Club Culture

Family connections require communication in order to strengthen emotional connections. Amy Tan, author of Joy Luck Club, demonstrates the value of family bonds throughout all of her novels. While writing, Tan considers personal struggles respecting Chinese culture and adopting American culture. Although fictional, Tan implements personal experiences while writing realistic circumstances in The Joy Luck Club. Tan’s characters experience traumas typically common within immigrant families, rather than unrelatable scenarios. Much like real life, Tan illustrates the disconnect between generations of Chinese mothers and American-raised daughters. When Tan describes her writing of her story, she explains, “The question is always related to my life,

Utilizing her own experiences and culture when writing places emphasis on the importance of understanding the value of history through elder generations. Understanding the division that takes place between immigrants and their native-born children allows Tan the chance to share her stories with the readers. Supporting evidence towards contrasting cultures, states, “this discontinuity, however, may give the reader a glimmer of confusion ethnic minorities in the United States feel, or perhaps a sense of disconnection between the families” (Stoeckl). The challenges in upholding ideal Chinese tradition and adopting American culture are only a few of the minor details Chinese-American children face after immigration. When analyzing realism and humanity’s disconnect in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, communication reveals differences between generations and

Miscommunication and misconstrued intentions can happen when familial divides are prominent. Highlighting this concept, Tan states, “for a long time now the woman wanted to give her daughter the single swan feather and tell her, ‘This feather may look worthless, but it comes for afar and carries with it all of my good intentions’” (Tan 3). All mother’s contain aspirations reflecting upon children, but detachment inhibits the immeasurable pressure felt from reaching children. However, the appearance of worthlessness may overshadow underlying ideals mothering generations seek. Providing the feather reveals love and care a mother longs to provide for her daughter, “the feather stands for the meaning of a mother’s life that she is desperate to convey to her daughter; the daughter, for her part, must, for reasons of her own, turn away and retreat” (Bloom). The tale demonstrates disconnect’s challenges as one may initiate conversation, whereas, another speaker may shut down. Truthful to humanity, people miss the “feather” of hopes parents desire to share. The feather wives tale told, expresses a realistic circumstances all parents face when connecting with children. Furthermore, when displaying familial pride, “I will use the sharp pain to penetrate my daughter’s tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is