We live in a mobile and global world with the development of the technology. Still America continues to be the symbol of the land of freedom and of opportunity. Arriving to America, the Chinese immigrants who come from a traditional, structured, old world struggle to find a balance in a modern and dynamic new world. In order to realize the American dream, the first generation of immigrants have to learn the language, acquire education, and assimilate into the dominant culture. They courageously leave the past behind except what they carry in their memory. Thus, immigrants often experience shock and resistance in dealing with the new world culture. This is especially true for the second generation Chinese-Americans who resist and are ashamed of their heritage. Amy Tan in The Joy Luck Club dramatizes this conflict which arises between the first and the second generations through sixteen stories of four mothers and four American-born daughters. Tan succeeds in showing the strength of the mother-daughter bond from China to America despite the cultural and linguistic differences between Chinese mothers and Chinese-Americans daughther through the immigrant narrative.
The Chinese culture is based on Confucius, whose teachings are more practical and ethical than religious. Confucius’ virtues include righteousness, propriety, integrity, and filial piety toward parents, living and dead. His teachings also emphasize obedience to the father figure, to the husband, and to the eldest son after the passing of the husband. Thus, the role of women is one of subordination to men. In a family the male figure maintains an absolute power over his familial matters. Whereas in America, gender does not have the same bearing on the cultural trad...
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...ily but also to her motherland China. She is fulfilling her mother’s dream of coming home when she said "I am going to China" (Tan 307).
Works Cited
Liu Wu-Chi. "A Short History of Confucian Philosophy" Hyperion Press, 1955.
Edwards, Jami. Rev of "The Joy Luck Club," by Amy Tan. The Book Report, Inc. 1999.
Shear, Walter. "Generational Differences and the Diaspora." Critique Spring 1993: 193-199. Web. 28 Aug. 2015.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00111619.1993.9933826
Standley, Anne P. "Maxine Hong Kingston." Notable Asian Americans. Ed. Helen Zia and Susan B. Gall. New York: Gale Research Inc., 1995: 164-6.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Vintage Contemporaries. New York: A Division of Random House, Inc. 1993.
Xu, Ben. "Memory and the Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club." Melus. V19. Spring 1994: 3-18.
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.
Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club uses much characterization. Each character is portrayed in different yet similar ways. When she was raised, she would do whatever she could to please other people. She even “gave up her life for her parents promise” (49), I the story The Red Candle we get to see how Tan portrays Lindo Jong and how she is brought to life.
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.
This novel can be seen as a medical thriller rather than a romance because of the way the chain of events take place throughout the laboratory. It cannot be called a
Xu, Ben. Memory and the Ethnic Self: Reading Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. An excerpt from MELEUS, Vol. 19, No.1 (Spring 1994). 1994. The Society for Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. 5 May 2010.
The American Dream can mean a number of different things to number of different people. Over the years this ideal has evolved and its definition will continue to change for many more years to come. What has not changed is the desire to achieve this dream. For decades now, people from all over the world have immigrated to the United States with hopes of obtaining this dream. However it seems that, to many immigrants the American dream has a very different and more modest definition. To many foreigners it means having the basic necessities in life and giving their children opportunities and life they ever had. Immigration can be a good and a bad thing. On one hand the overall standard of living is better but on the other hand it is almost inevitable that the family, especially the children, will lose some of their culture as they Americanize and assimilate. This is partially the reason why the mothers of The Joy Luck Club continue to have the Joy Luck Club meetings. Even though they are now in America, they want to make sure their daughters are exposed to and maintain the Chinese culture. Mother/ daughter relationships are a large component in Amy Tan’s award winning novel, The Joy Luck Club.
The mother-daughter relationship is often complex and confusing. Amy Tan explores this relationship with novel The Joy Luck Club narrated by four daughters and three mothers: Jing-mei Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Lena St. Clair, Waverly Jong, An-mei Jordan, Ying-Ying St. Clair, and Lindo Jong. June narrates in her late mother's place. The mothers talk about their difficult pasts in China and how they have been changed. The trauma from their past causes their daughters not to be able to connect to . The women are finally able to connect to each other. The women are forced to learn from the past, overcome adversity, and learn to understand one another.
Is it fair to judge someone by their sex? In traditional Chinese culture, many judgments were made about a person just by observing their sex. The women was looked upon as an inferior being. They had little or no status in society, and little was expected from them. They were discriminated against when they tried to stand up for themselves. Chinese culture was customarily male dominated. The male was expected to do most of the work, and the woman was expected to stay at home with their mouth shut. This custom leaves an unwelcome feeling in a woman's heart. They feel like nobody cares, and it makes it much harder to live with an optimistic view on life.
Throughout the novel, The Joy Luck Club, author Amy Tan explores the issues of tradition and change and the impact they have on the bond between mothers and daughters. The theme is developed through eight women that tell their separate stories, which meld into four pairs of mother-daughter relationships.
The Joy Luck Club is a representation of the persistent tensions and powerful bonds between mother and daughter in a Chinese American society. The book illustrates the hardships both the mother and daughters go through in order to please the other. Also, it shows the troubles the daughters face when growing up in two cultures. This book reveals that most of the time mothers really do know best.
The Joy Luck Club is the telling of a tale of struggle by four mothers and their four daughters trying to understand the issue of gender identity, how they each discover or lose their sense of self and what they mean to one another. Throughout the book each of the mothers works hard at teaching their daughters the virtues of Chinese wisdom while allowing the opportunities of American life. They try passing on a piece of themselves despite the great barriers that are built between the women. Each of the stories gives a wonderful glimpse into the Chinese culture and heritage that the mothers are trying to reveal to their daughters through the use of festivals, food dishes, marriage ceremonies, and the raising of children, essentially their past experiences.
Over the course of the play Hamlet has a number of ongoing conflicts within himself. These conflicts, in my opinion, serve as Hamlet’s greatest opposition. Hamlet is first shown in a state of mourning due to the death of his father. “With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not nor it cannot come to good: But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.” (Hamlet to self, Act I, Scene II, p. 1642) Hamlet’s failure to reveal his true feelings puts his personality into perspective and shows th...
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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.
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