Literary Analysis Of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

Literary Analysis of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club Born to Chinese immigrant parents, Amy Tan is a second-generation Chinese American. Although Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989) isn’t strictly autobiographical, Tan has managed to slide bits and pieces of her life in the novel. Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club (1989) consists of four sections narrated by four Chinese Immigrant mothers and four of their American born Chinese daughters; The Joy Luck Club (1989) is divided into four main sections narrated in third person by the mothers and daughters. The novel contains the struggles of first generation immigrant mothers and their second generation immigrant daughters due to language barriers and cultural differences. Born in Oakland, California

Her writings mainly target those who have immigrated from China to the United States especially the struggles of having a dual cultural identity (Champion 16). As seen through Amy Tan’s work, she also writes about family, mainly mother and daughter relationships (Champion 19). Amy Tan used some of her personal experiences and relate or use it on her writing. Just as she uses her strained relationship with her own mother as an inspiration in her novel The Joy Luck Club (1989). Tan only made peace with her mother, when her mother disclose her past to Tan- which has great similarities to Jing Mei, a character in The Joy Luck Club

Which was symbolic because as June takes the place of her mother, it was a like the first step of her journey to understand her mother and the mother daughter relationship (Emerick 1). Then the book’s structure is actually similar to the structure of the game; “Like a game of Mahjong, the novel is structured into four major divisions, each division consisting of four parts and each part presenting one of the four four mothers or one of the four daughters” (Emerick 2). Thus making the game “a controlling metaphor for the novel” (Emerick 2). Mahjong and its elements like the walls provide a better understanding of the novel; Just like walls, the Chinese culture and Chinese language creates a barrier between the mothers and daughters. One of the daughters,June, expressed her opinion about how she feels that her and her mother, Suyuan, “spoke a different language” (Emerick 3) because Suyuan tired to explain to June how to play Mahjong in Chinese while June responds to Suyuan in English. The game of Mahjong not only provided a favorable way of starting the story but it also has a significant impact on the theme, imagery, structure, and characterization of the novel (Emerick 5). This evident in the final chapter of The Joy Luck Club (1989) when June