Story-telling in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and Mother Journeys

Story-telling in The Joy Luck Club and Mother Journeys

"Beginning with Gussie," Maxine Kumin's short story from the anthology Mother Journeys, has a central issue similar to that in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club: the need for transference of stories from mother to daughter. These two works have quite a few similarities, despite the fact that they are tales about very different cultural traditions. Is the cultural difference important? Or do these works reflect a universal truth about story-telling between mothers and daughters?

First of all, what are some of the similarities and differences between these works? Like Jing-mei Woo, Rebecca does not learn the full story of her mother's past until her mother has died. The past of both mothers involves children born before the daughter to whom the story is told; these earlier children were left behind because of the circumstances in which the mother found herself at that time. In both these instances, the stories are told by others who wish the daughter to understand the mother more fully; both stories seem to give the daughter a better understanding of herself as well as of her mother.

Story-telling may be even more central in The Joy Luck Club, with the stories told as lessons throughout the daughters' young lives. But "Beginning with Gussie" also demonstrates that the daughters know about their mothers' past experiences: Tweedie knows the story of the romance between her mother and father; Rebecca knows her parents' story though she doesn't learn the whole of her mother's story until her mother's death.

Another similarity is that Gussie's reason for telling her story to her granddaughter Tweedie is akin to the reason Ying-Ying decides she must tell her story to her daughter Lena: both are concerned about the choices being made by the daughter/granddaughter, choices that they see as too similar to their own past mistakes. Gussie ends her story to granddaughter with "And thus, Tweedie, while I cannot applaud your reliving my history, I am deeply happy to think that my genes are being handed on. Modified, broadened, no doubt improved upon." (Mother 274, in Mother Journeys) Ying-Ying thinks to herself, as she determines to tell the story of her past to Lena, "How can I leave this world without leaving her my spirit? So this is what I will do. .